I wouldn't put up holiday lights before the new LED lights came along because I didn't want to face a big power bill in January. Now I can have lights because the new LED lights use 90% less power! LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, the same lights that have been around for years in our electronic appliances. Now the manufacturers have figured out how to make them in other colors as well as white. I bought several strings of 70 icicle lights for $12.95 each at the supermarket. According to the package, each seven-foot long string of 70 lights burns 4.8 watts of power, less than most nightlights! Are they as bright as other holiday lights? They sure look like it, maybe even brighter! I’m afraid I got a bit carried away, now I have 12 strings of lights! I’ve calculated that if I run them 6 hours a day for a month, I’ll pay less than $1.30 to run all those light strings. I can afford that and it means that I won’t be an energy hog over the holidays either. Winter has descended here but no snow on the ground yet so I've been putting up strings of lights outside so that I won't have to do it in the snow. I connect the light strings to a couple of outside timers to automatically turn them on an off. I won't switch them on until about the tenth of December. I think a few people start way too early, a couple of places here turned their lights on in September!
I do not put up Christmas until Dec. 1st...and it all comes down before midnight on the 31st. Kinda my own tradition. No room for a tree this year, will have to do with lights and do dads.
Thanks for the information @Ted Richards. This will be my first year of putting up outside lights since my Michael passed December of ‘14. But I now have a grandson living with me, and I feel he deserve some holiday bling. His parents never ever able to do outside decorations, so I want to give it to him. Although he is 27, the Halloween decorations got as much excitement as if he had been seven. So I’m going to trick this place up with your suggestion.
Make sure you get him involved with the selection and physically putting up the lights and stuff. That's half the fun! I put up a light arrangement in my bay window too as well as outside lights. The only reason I started so early is because I live a long way north of you and we get a fair bit of snow later. I don't like wading around in snow to put lights up. Do you get any snow in your area?
We might see snow about every ten years here, but much of Texas gets it up around Dallas and the panhandle. Here it only last until maybe noon. I love to build snowmen in people’s driveways before 7:am, that way we all have good excuses to stay home. Here in Houston, even snow flurries are cause for everyone to stay home from work. They even offer doulble time wages just to get people to come in. Even our news will tell us to stay home if it’s noy an emergency.