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Christmas Lights: White or Multi-Colored?
(Thanks to John Sherck for inspiring this entry)
When I was a little kid in the sixties, nearly everyone used multi-colored strings of lights for their Christmas decorating. Strands with small bulbs were used on the indoor trees, sometimes the blinking kind, while most people used the large-bulbed strands to outline the house with. We even had two large Christmas candle lights, that stood three feet high, which we placed on either side of the front door. My welder grandfather had made these out of lead pipe back in the 1940s and they had huge flame-shaped lightbulbs that I still have no idea where my parents got the bulbs from.
I remember as a kid sitting under the Christmas tree with all the lights in the room turned off, so I could enjoy the beautiful pattern the multi-colored lights made in the otherwise dark room. Doing so always put me into the Christmas spirit, making me look forward that much more to Christmas morning.
But in the seventies, many people got the idea that using multi colored lights, especially the ones with the large bulbs, were not tasteful, but were actually quite tacky. These same people began using white lights exclusively for their Christmas decorating -- on their Christmas trees and everything they lighted outdoors. Some went the minimalist route, confining lights to the Christmas tree only, with a single white-lighted electric candle in each of the front facing windows, and nothing outdoors.
My family continued using the small multi colored lights for the Christmas tree, but we'd always used the white lighted candles in the windows, simply because they looked the most like real candles. With my grandfather's outdoor candles, we usually had a pine tree outdoors with a strand or two of the large colored lights on it. We didn't go overboard with the outdoor decorations -- nothing we did gave the electric company orgasms, but what we did was colorful.
Nowadays, I see more and more people doing the all-white light thing, but the amount of lighting has increased. Similarly, the colored light crowd is still holding its own, though in recent years I've seen strands with all one color lights: green, red, blue, purple, orange, and so on. People that use those, usually combine them with white light strands.
Personally, I'm in the colored lights camp. Nothing says Christmas to me like the strands of multi colored lights I remember from my childhood. I still get the same feeling I did back then when I see them. Sometimes, it's a bit gaudy, but lights on their own are never tacky.
White lights, on the other hand, are the same color as what you see year-round in your lamps and other types of everyday lighting. There's nothing particularly festive or Christmas-y about them, unlike the colored lights, which are seen only at Christmas time.
Though I like to see the white lights combined with single-colored strands of colored lights, seeing a home decorated solely in white lights leaves me cold. There's something sterile and ho-hum about them, not to mention the snobby, pretentious aura they can have on an expensive home that says, "more tasteful than thou."
Thoughts?
Gosh... "snobby, pretentious aura"... you say that like it's a bad thing.
;)
yes, it's the inflatable/plastic outdoor ornaments that can tend toward the
tacky, not lights alone.
I like to think of my Christmas decorations as "delightfully tacky". I
have both white and multi-colored strands outside--though my tree has
multicolored lights--and I have one of the snowglobes out front.
I like 'em all. I passed a house today that had sooo many lights and they
were purple, green and gold. It was wild and I have to wonder if those
folks are from New Orleans with their Mardi Gras colored holiday lights.
The prettiest my house ever looked was all white. We lived for 20 years in
an adorable Victorian Cottage Style (antique) white house on a busy corner
in a wonderful neighborhood. It really stood out with an old fashioned
front porch and a second floor balcony in the back (both of which were
visible from one street or another). For years I would have a huge tree
covered in white lights in the (front) living room, visible through the
windows on both the front and side street. Then I hung one of those
Moravian Stars on the front porch. Finally, I'd put another Christmas tree
(usually a live tree that we'd later plant in the back yard) on the upper
rear balcony with all white lights and a white light star. It was elegant.
I got our tree for our little apartment today. I'm thinking I'm nearly
ready to have a house again. I just don't know where I'd want it to be.
Probably not Atlanta. Now I'm babbling. Toodles.
Honey is anti-white light, he likes multi colors. I like them all. What I
don't like is a single strand all flashing on and off at the same time (the
"Eat At Joes" effect). Then there are the flashing strands strung together
so the tree is lit on top, dark on the bottom, then lit on the bottom, and
dark on top (the "cheap--MOTEL" effect).
I love a tree with all white lights because it makes me think of snow in
sunlight. Outside, we only have all-weather fake pine boughs and red
ribbons. Our roof is high and steep, and a few swags and wreaths keep DH
from risking life and limb hanging lights. We light the front of the house
with floodlights at night.
