The Lockhorns by Bunny Hoest and John Reiner for December 10, 2024

The Russian Tea Room in NYC had Christmas lights all year long—at least, until it was sold to new management.

I see ads on TV for a device that just shows lighted patterns on the front of the house. Makes the place look like it has some kind of communicable disease!

Despite the lyrics from Gretchen Wilson’s hit implying that it’s only “Rednecks” that keep their Christmas lights up year-round, considering the complexity of some of the displays I’ve seen, I suspect that after the first time they were put up, they were never taken down.

We started slow this year, from the day after Canadian Thanksgiving and finished about a week after USAian Thanksgiving. Looking good.

Another step along the subtle path of getting old and dying: not putting up Christmas lights. It closely follows turning out the porch light and not buying candy for Halloween.

In 100 years when we replace the calendar with “The 12 Months of Christmas,” and simply do away with all other holidays, I suppose leaving your lights up makes sense. So far, we’ve migrated the start of Christmas back to October, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before it comes for September too.

That’s called efficiency.

You evetually have replace the bulbs.

It makes sense. Why take them down when you’ll just have to put them up again eventually?

Loretta bet you didn’t help Leroy put them up

I thought that was something people from the south only did.