More light -- more dark our woes.

Okay! Thanksgiving is gone! Time to get the Christmas stuff up! Hurry hurry hurry! It's an especially good day to fight about the lights! 

Actually, I'm not sure about whether people fight over the Christmas lights. There may be some families where Dad insists on something like football lights on the house or tree... 

...but I think most of the time it's whatever Mom wants.

And what does Mom want? It's my experience that many high-class type families, or those who want to look high-class, prefer all-white lights. It looks snowy and stately, the kind of décor that says WASPy restraint. Lower-class families prefer the more fun multicolored lights, as do families with small children, and of course those whose small children have driven them to lower class. Iconoclastic high-class types will go with all blue lights, which have a restraint to them like the white lights, but more soothing. Also appropriate for Jewish families as Hanukkah lights. Iconoclasts of lower class go all-green, which is Christmassy but also a little non-Christmassy at the same time; someone celebrating the solstice would be equally fine with green lights on their green boughs. And those who get the hard-to-find all-red lights may think it looks Christmassy against the green decorations, but those are black in the night so the place looks like a Commie safehouse. 

Some people may try to be ecumenical, putting white lights on one bush and green on another and so on, but I guess that it neither wins the support of the white or green or other light people. They never are so ecumenical that they mix in multis, though.

Indeed, you can't win, but you also can't lose. Any decoration that isn't positively offensive is good decoration. If Christmas is not complete for Dad without his football lights, let him have some football lights, I say. If someone wants to go the Commie light route, fine, whatever. It's still pretty.

Personally I'm more of a multicolored light guy myself, but my wife prefers all-white, so guess what we use? What can I say; she's the classy one in the relationship. Meanwhile, for my fellow low-class lads, here's the type we can wear personally:

I'm referring to the light string, of course, not the model. She seems awfully excited by the necklace of battery-powered lights, doesn't she? I think the necklace and Santa hat were Photoshopped on. 

If you really want to see fireworks, watch what happens when a blinking-lights person marries a steady-light person. That's a which-side-of-the-toilet-paper-roll-hangs-down level fight. It makes mere religious differences look like an argument over white vs. colored underwear. But that's much too hairy a topic for this blog today, which is all about peace and serenity. Mainly because I'm too full to move.