Over the years, my family seems to have put less and less decorations up. Lights, Christmas tree, miscellaneous decorations here and there...all this stuff is still done, but it seems the overall feel is less "Christmasy." My girlfriend's family on the other hand (her mother specifically) goes all out. The inside of her house is all decked out with a lot of Christmas "paraphernalia." She even decorated her own Christmas wreaths which happen to look extremely professional.

When I used to live in Tucson, Arizona, there was a placed called Winter Haven. Almost all the homes in this area were decked out for Christmas. It was pretty amazing, but I bet their electric bills are a killer.

Since we rebuild our backyard a bit there seems to be more room for Christmas decoration now. It will most likely be some lights hung up on a few tree's though.

Its sad that we can't go all out decorating the outside of the house. I've always wanted to put a rope tree outstide and hang lights from the roof and put out christmas tree path dividers, they'd look well cool.
But in away decorating the inside of the house is better because thats were you spend most of your time isn't it lol.

I am going to be a scrooge this year. No lights outside, and none on the tree (and that's if I set the tree up). It's not that I am doing it to be a scrooge really...heh, but only because I live alone. Before I kicked my exgf out, I had a reason...now....who's going to see it? I only have a few friends that come over (I usually go elsewhere with friends), and I go to family....family hardly ever comes to me. So what's the point? No one will see it. I have the box with a 6' tree in it that I brought out from the garage and sat against the wall....but every time I look at it, I ask myself...what's the point? Maybe I am being a scrooge and just don't realize it....I don't know. I just feel that its not worth going through the trouble to set something up that only I will enjoy, when I won't really be around much to....."enjoy" it.

My parents and I never bothered to put up lights since like ten years ago. You can tell that the older the children get (on our block) the less likely lights are being put up. I think it's a thing that's fun for kids, but laziness kicks in when they're hitting the 40s that they just don't give a darn anymore. I think it's fine because it saves set up and take down.

Taking them down truly is a pain.

Actually, no. The act of taking them down is okay compared to what comes after: storing them. Unless you take care in the way you wrap up those lights, you'll have an untangling fiasco on your hands 11 months later.

Anyone have any good ideas for storing lights? I'm personally planning to just put them in a bag. :(

I wrap them up around my arm and stack em in a big box. >_>

But somehow while sitting in there for 11 months they still manage to tangle themselves anyways. My lights have the added horror of being wrapped around garland. So sometimes both the strands of light and the garland locks itself up in a big ball of hell. I guess that's just part of the process of putting them up. Unless you have a slave to do it for you. I usually force some cousin or sibling to untangle the mess.