They should be colored.
I am anti white Christmas tree lights. I think they came on the scene about 15 years ago, along with Martha Stewart. Suddenly colored tree lights were silly or childish and everyone needed sophisticated white lights. Well I say HMPH. Colored lights remind me of being a kid and being excited about Christmas. Also, who among us has a sophisticated Christmas tree anyway?
This is just my opinion. Please feel free to argue with me in the comments.
(By the way, I am aware the tree is falling over. It is actually a potted tree, and the root ball is just not going to stay straight in that pot, no matter what we do. It bugs, but oh well. We’ve never bought a living tree before, but we decided to get one this year and plant it with the baby’s placenta. Isn’t that a good idea?*)
*If you’re squirming about placenta talk, you should know that planting a tree with it is about the least hippie-ish thing you can do. Do I need to tell you some people eat them? Or even worse, keep 30 lbs of placenta in their freezer for 8 years? (cough cough Jesse cough cough)
Dear Lord, I almost missed the placenta talk in my hurry to defend the white lights. So first, IN THE FREEZER? Despite the obvious WHY?, that’s just taking up valuable ice cream and cow space.
So here’s the problem with colored lights: They’re not always in the same order. Like, if you have to replace one strand because it burns out, the red and blue might be switched in the order, and then it makes things look weird. AND, AND sometimes the replacement strand’s blue doesn’t MATCH the old blue, but instead looks more purple-y.
Clearly I was scarred in childhood by parents without an attention to detail. If I were any better at math, I should’ve been an engineer.
I think it all boils down to what you grew up with, and that’s why I must defend the white lights. I’ve always had them, and in addition my mom puts little red bows all over the tree – to me, that’s Christmas. Because that’s what I grew up with, I’ve always considered white lights to be classy, and colored lights to be rather garish – but again, only because that was my childhood. I’m not judging.
Yeah, I’m a white Christmas lights kind a guy. Ah well.
That said–you have a pickle!! Did you know there’s a whole thing behind pickle ornaments?
http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth11.htm
I fully support you on the colored lights. White lights are sooo… blah. Could be that the only people I knew growing up that did white lights were this Swedish family, and they always had such a Charlie Brown christmas tree to go with them. But yes, they are actually very Scandanavian.
I also abhor the idea of the “designer tree” where there is a color theme and it looks like you stole your tree from a department store or coordinated it to match your decor. They often have white lights too.
But then again I also have a pickle ornament. I never hide it in the tree like German tradition says, but I have many other odd ornaments from around the world for it to compete with.
Remember that brief span of time when blue lights were quietly warring with white lights for which color would win the single color Christmas lights war? Our next door neighbors had blue. Across the street it was white. My parents, in the name of peace, opted for multi. Obviously white won, but for a while there it was iffy.
I just love your idea of planting the tree with the placenta. And I’m on the same page about colored lights. Your tree is very cute.
I think that yes, childhood familiarity is a HUGE factor in all this. (It also creates a lifetime bias for things like meatloaf, spaghetti sauce, and sock-folding/rolling technique). And the eventual grown-up decorating technique is a pretty good indicator of personality (detail oriented, rustic/handicraft, sleek and modern, “traditional,” messy throw it on ornaments…) I also would like to submit to the jury a couple of other considerations for light selection.
Tree size/fullness–On a charlie brown tree (also my childhood bias), I ONLY like colored lights. It looks so cheerfully disheveled, and the color actually creates fullness, I think. White lights would only emphasize the gaps between branches. And everyone knows you buy a Charlie Brown tree to make it feel better, not taunt it. A big, fat, full tree is made a little more delicate by white lights, I think.
Combined ornament mass/color variation– My mom still hangs the toilet paper roll people my brother (who’s 20 years older than me) made in 2nd grade. Their tree is a crazy, crowded, frenetic mix of colors, styles, and materials. (Remember the personality thing?) Of course they use colored lights, and when my dad turns the lights on blinking it’s somewhat seizure inducing. For that level of variation, I think I might prefer white lights and piles and piles of fun colored ornaments.
Bulb size– I love white lights in very teensy bulbs and in HUGE bulbs that look more like mini lanterns than lights. For anything in between, gotta go with colored.
I used to be all about the white tree lights… and then one day I decided I wasn’t a white tree light person anymore. They look too perfect and I’m learning that I appreciate the imperfections more than the perfect image. So I say bring on the lights that are red-blue in one strand and blue-red in another. Or the slight color variations between strands of lights. I can’t wait for the tree to go up this year.
I don’t mind colored lights as long as they don’t flash. I hate the flashing ones. I have white lights on my tree but that’s because I felt like being a purist this year.
I love that you’re a colored-light neat freak. …
OMG I love that beautiful tree. What a gorgeous shape.
I like both colored lights and white lights. I think of myself as liking them “the same, but in different ways,” but I can tell which one I prefer:
1) We have colored lights on our tree.
2) I found a pre-lit tree I really, really love—and I said, “Oh. But it has white lights.”
i wholeheartedly agree about colored lights. I like colored lights elsewhere, such as draped across my mantle. but my tree MUST have colored lights. it would look Not Right any other way.
my placenta from tristan’s birth is still in the freezer. occasionally i come across it and am puzzled for a second about what sort of mystery meat it is. :O hoping to plant it in the spring.
Beth: Wow! That IS anal! You had better stick with the white lights. Oh, and about the placentas, my friend has three kids worth of them in her freezer. Why? Well, once you save it, you can’t exactly just throw it away, and she’s never had the right tree or location or other special purpose for them. I hope she doesn’t mind that I outed her!
Peter: Yes, I see your point about what you grew up with, but again, I’m not going for classy, clearly.
Erik: Yes! We know about the pickle’s traditions, but we just hang it where it looks good. Someday when there are kiddos, I suppose we’ll play right.
serror: Yes! Blah! Exactly. And designer trees? No.
Adrienne: Yes, I do! I actually would take blue lights over white any day. We actually had blu on our house the last couple of years, but we got new COLORED lights this year. The big old-timey bulbs.
tia: Thanks for the support! You know some silent people are going, “WHAT?!”
Emilie: I so appreciate your analysis of the situation and agree on all points!
shelikestotravel: They are just so much more cheerful, aren’t they?
chickadee: Yeah, what’re you trying to say?
Swistle: I hear you! Most pretty pre-lit garland-type things are with white lights.
janaya: Yeah! The colored lights win, I think! Also, thanks for joining Jesse in the Old Placenta in the Freezer Club.
She still has them! Oh my dear Lord, what is that girl waiting for?
And colored, all the way.
Hmmm … what am I trying to say? Just that the pattern for colored lights seems to be the not-so-neat-freak … perhaps your inner chaos is about to be released with this munchkins … he he …
I am shocked by the heavy polling toward colored lights!! My family were always white-light purists, and that is the only thing I will hang on the tree or outdoors. You have to go back to the origin of xmas lights, which is candles on the tree, so clearly white lights are what follow. I also think of the lights as representing starlight and glittering snow, so therefore they should be white. I will politely refrain from opining on the colored lights themselves. :^)
Thanks for talking about the placenta. We had a hospital birth for the first kiddo, so didn’t even think about that, but now that we’re home-birthing the second one, we’ll need to think of something to do with it. We like the tree-planting idea. Danny wants to buy a place with enough room to plant an oak tree and has now decided we will plant the two together.