Got your Christmas lights up yet?

For those of you who are already looking to get a good case of holiday fever, Magic 106.7 in Boston runs an all-holiday music internet channel, with very few if any commercials and about 85-90 percent good stuff (the occasionally sappy pap from the Carpenters or something does come up from time to time, but that's what mute buttons are for.)

http://www.customchannels.net/Players/XMAS_06/Pop/WMJX.htm

 

That's what my family had in our front bushes. The multi-colored string. LOVED it when they would glow through the snow that had fallen.

Now they just do tiny white lights in the bushes with red spotlight things on the front of the house.

 

Since my gf is a Christmas nut, and I'm not, we set up on December 6 every year since it's my Saint's day, and jolly old St. Nick is the patron saint of children.

If she had her way, we'd have them up on T-giving. Way too early.

 

We went and got our tree yesterday; wife and kids decorated it today (I was working). As for outside lights, I can't get that January power bill out of my mind from last year. It was about the same as July and August. Those three months were 50 percent higher than the rest of the year. So bah freakin' humbug on the outside lights. I'll give in in about two weeks when my kids start throwing things at me ...

 

Yeah, I turned that on at the beginning of my shift and I've been putting my earphones on and off all night. So far, Auld Lang Syne has been played five times that I've heard. In less than 6 hours.

And that's with my headphones off about half the time.

 

My wife suggested putting the tree up this afternoon. I managed to back that up to next weekend. People can see the tree through the window. That's our Christmas lights.

 

All of our Christmas paraphrenalia was lost in our big move to the south. That included all sorts of precious family ornaments. We don't know where they went. Last winter, we were so upset about it that we didn't decorate at all.

This year, we've decided to start anew. We cut our own tree at a farm on the Friday after Thanksgiving, rekindling a tradition that is probably my favorite part of the holidays. We also stopped off at a decoration store while enroute to our Thanksgiving turkey and bought all sorts of cheap glass ornaments. We're still a little short on decorations, so there will be another ornament trip next week and probably a big post-Christmas shopping spree.

 

If he's involved in it, I think we all know what HeinekenMan's Secret Santa should be getting him.

 

These are what I put up on my house in the span of a couple of weeks. I used 9 strands. Yesterday I put up five strands, climbed off my roof and went to plug them in and realized I had put them on backward and I had a female end of the strand trying to plug into an extension cord. So I had to climb back up and turn them all around. It was very annoying, but well worth it.

 

I'm glad none of the board's Democrats have come on this board and started a war on Christmas. [/o'reilly/hannity/limbaugh]

 

Got a lot of Christmas stuff done today with the fiancee. Put up the pre-lit tree and watched "Elf," which will become an annual tradition for me, I'm sure. Held off on hanging the lights on the deck, though, because of the snow.

 

For whatever reason, the parents always put up the fake tree and lights Thanksgiving evening and took them down on Jan. 1.

Now that I've grown older and more cynical, I let me wife do whatever the hell she wanted. However, this year I am doing things my parents' way just to see the difference.

Well, that difference is that my mom has 20 years' worth of Christmas decoration crap that I found to be personal, such as ornaments I made in elementary school that were kept or just really old family ornaments bought when people still shopped in downtown stores. All the crap I have this year was bought from a chain store and the same shit that everybody else has. Of course, being in sports, I have neither time off nor money to fly home for Christmas. Now I'm cynical again.