Pro/Con: Holiday Light Displays

The holiday season is officially here, so break out your decorations, ugly sweaters, and Christmas spirit! The Blake Beat has gathered the pros and cons of your festive lights. Are you all for them, or can you not stand them?

All things good and bad come with a story. The Salgado family are Germantown residents who simply celebrated Christmas by hanging up holiday lights around their house. Then came the Home Owners Association, which fined them $650, and increased until they were removed. Supuli Salgado claimed that “this year [they] did tone it down – by a lot.” The HOA still found it a public nuisance, despite the fact that the Salgados’ neighborhood has houses that have bigger and brighter displays. Pahan Salgado argued that it couldn’t be a nuisance as “it wasn’t making any sounds.” If it may be an eyesore visually, you can’t argue the fact that the holiday lights don’t make any noise. Despite the fine, the Salgados refused to back down. The family will still continue their holiday tradition.

Pros:

Lights are by far the most popular Christmas decoration. They create an appealing atmosphere for the holidays by enhancing the festive spirit. These displays evoke nostalgic memories, knit communities together, and illuminate the night sky while also improving mental health.

Holiday light displays are shared experiences that not only reach the homeowner but also children, adults, and seniors. They create and bring back memories of tradition, company, celebration, and happiness. An article from WBAL-TV, a local television station in Baltimore, shared quotes from those who visited Miracle on 34th Street. Guests mentioned that they bring their families yearly to relive the magical experience and share it with their children. Psychologists discovered that these visuals trigger positive emotions when serotonin is released.

This neurotransmitter increases with exposure to light. It is no secret that an early evening looks like a late night in the winter, but the variety of vibrant colors lights up the sky and can spark a sense of joy, comfort, and warmth. An Insights Psychology article claims that red, orange, and yellow tones are uplifting and energizing. Cooler hues, such as green, blue, and purple, are soothing and peaceful. Similar to the colors, the patterns and intensity of the display also affect our emotions.

Cons:

Now holiday lights are nice for creating Christmas spirit and providing warmth during the season, but people need to realize that there’s more to festive lights than just looking nice. This is the real world, and everything has a price.

No, really, everything has a price. These things can be really expensive. It can cost as little as $20 – 30 to cover an entire tree or ten times the price for a whole house, and that’s not counting each story of your home. Fixr says the price to install a 2,000 square ft. home is around $500 – $575 for a one-story home, $750 – $825 for a two-story home, and up to $875 – $900, and $825 – $950 for a three-story home. And that’s, of course, to say nothing if you’re going beyond 2,000 square feet.

Depending on how many lights you have, some scenarios could leave holiday lights to be nothing but exhaustion. Picture yourself in your own bedroom, and you look out the window to see a horde of Christmas lights brazenly blasting across your face. As much as holiday lights bring together the community through the holidays, the novelty can wear off for some and turn into an eyesore that you can’t escape until after Christmas.

But hey, at least you can escape that. Let’s cover one thing you can’t escape. Taxes and billing. Billing is already at pretty high costs, especially with electricity. Increases can vary depending on how many lights you have. EnergySage covers the prices of holiday light billing, in which they claim “about $7.90 for December” if your display is limited to a single Christmas tree. Those who are willing to go all out and do the roof will spend an extra $115.23 for their electricity billing. Those are the people who are able to pay for it, but why not save over $100, let alone the extra couple of hundred for the aforementioned installation pricing?

Now at least you’re risking your wallet, but please mind your home. House fires are only so deadly. If you don’t water your tree often or if your lights are in an unstable condition, it can cause your tree to catch fire, and because it’s dry, it wouldn’t be a slow and steady fire either. With the tree now dry, it can catch fire in under a minute, and if you’re not quick enough to put it out, it can spread throughout the home. Southern Living says that the stand below the tree should add a quart of water for every inch your stand is. They also notify you to keep any other type of heat away from the tree to prevent dryness. Two people die annually across the United States, according to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). They also claim it as “a very small but notable US fire problem.”

Now all and all, I understand that lights can be good, warm, and enlightening for us as people, and it’s good for the holiday season. What about the animals? Holiday lights and any other artificial lights are known to cause disruption to the world’s ecosystems as a whole and even confuse migration periods from time to time, change sleep and reproduction, and in some cases, indirect death. DarkSky claims that “many insects are drawn to light,” adding that “some predators exploit this attraction to their advantage.” Even birds can die because “[they] collide with needlessly illuminated buildings and towers.” They even found that sea turtles are losing their population because “artificial lights draw them away from the ocean. In Florida alone, millions of hatchlings die this way every year.” Many species, their habitat, and the general ecosystem can potentially become at risk of decline because of holiday lights, and overall cause a general disruption for environmental species and habitats as a whole.

Whether you love the festive charm of Christmas lights or prefer taking the Grinch’s side on this one, the Blake Beat wishes you a warm and joyful holiday season!