She was shamed for still having her Christmas lights up.

February 11, 2021 3:45 PM

Neighbors are now putting theirs back up in solidarity. “No one really knows what is going on inside the house or why we didn’t take down the decorations,” said Pascucci, 31. “Our entire family was sick with covid starting December 24th. Within this timeframe, we lost 2 family members. One being my father,” she continued. “He loved decorating our house every year for the holidays ever since we were children and he took so much pride in doing so. He did it for us, especially for my 2 year old son who he loved so dearly.”
posted by folklore724 (74 comments total)

We have a simple policy in our house: until the pandemic is over, the lights will go away when our 3 year old stops giggling every time we turn them on. The last year has been an especially good one to let someone do whatever brings them comfort in the world.
posted by adamsc at 4:07 PM on February 11, 2021 [60 favorites]

There are a couple of houses on my ride home that still have their lights on and I'm happy to see them. It's cold and dark, why not let us have some colourful lights?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:15 PM on February 11, 2021 [35 favorites]

Between Covid and our post-election political dumpster fire, Christmas lights turned out to be a big comfort for me this year. I can't even remember thinking of them as a comfort before. If they help anyone, I say go for it. Who cares what time of year it is?

Hell of a lot less intrusive and jarring than fireworks, anyway.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:27 PM on February 11, 2021 [23 favorites]

I think some people equate having lights on your house with the more commercial forms of Christmas Creep and overreact to it. I put up projector lights that shine pleasant patterns on our cathedral ceiling one year and we all liked it so much they just stay up year round. Let people have these simple pleasures.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:29 PM on February 11, 2021 [11 favorites]

“Houses suddenly lit up again,” McGuggart said. “Everybody has their Christmas lights on to show that we’re all behind the person who couldn’t take hers down.”

Good for them!

Ours are still up, and we turn them on every night -- we're a number of storeys up from the street, but they're certainly visible to buildings across the way where I can see a few people have theirs still up also. They're LEDs and don't use much juice. And they're staying the hell up for now because it gets dark early and they brighten the place up.

I might take them down once we find out when we can get vaccinated.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:31 PM on February 11, 2021 [9 favorites]

My winter holiday lights are up today and they will remain that way for at least another three weeks. If anyone complains to me about it (which I doubt they will), I intend to laugh in their face.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 4:46 PM on February 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

We had ours up until the last week of January, but our tree was so dry we were starting to get worried about a fire.

I still see Christmas trees and lights up around the neighborhood. It makes me happy
posted by glaucon at 4:48 PM on February 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

I keep my trees up all year. Cheers to the people in this neighborhood for supporting her AND breaking out their own decorations.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:50 PM on February 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

That letter is postmarked 30th Jan. Doesn't the writer know that Christmas decorations not removed by the Feast of the Epiphany must be left up until Candlemas, which falls on February 2?

Valentines Day has nothing to do with it.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 5:07 PM on February 11, 2021 [9 favorites]

I was planning to take down my lights the weekend after the inauguration, until my wife told me that someone down the street from us posted, on nextdoor, a passive-aggressive "offer" to "help" take down people's lights (there are a few other stragglers) since it apparently offended their delicate sensibilities. This triggered my "don't be a joyless fuck mental spite complex" and now I can never take them down.
posted by dudemanlives at 5:17 PM on February 11, 2021 [57 favorites]

Yep, there are still trees up around here, too. Do whatever you gotta do -- I just pray they are artificial.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:38 PM on February 11, 2021

I just don’t get people like the letter writer. How does someone else’s lights hurt them? Why do they care so much and why would they go out of their way to deliberately be mean to someone they don’t even know over something so small? There is so little joy in the world right now that if a few coloured lights make that house smile, let them have it! I’m so glad that their neighbours are in solidarity with them.
posted by Jubey at 5:39 PM on February 11, 2021 [8 favorites]

Christians are confusing, but I seriously don't even understand the objection. They're pretty lights. Who the fuck cares if they stay up until Spring?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:39 PM on February 11, 2021 [12 favorites]

In house Underpants we always have a real tree which is decorated with many lights and ornaments going waaay back through both our families histories. We do not call it a Christmas Tree we call it our Winter Tree as it provides light and joy through the darkest days of winter. Our longest lasting tree was into March a few years back. We get a Canaan variety and ensure it is adequately watered.

Throughout the WHOLE year we have Christmas lights / icicle style lights on our porch as well as window candles in all windows. All solar driven LEDs.

I do not get the entitlement thing where someone feels it necessary or appropriate to insert themselves into another persons life but they do not have the cajones to actually own their annoyance or dissatisfaction with someone else's way of living. Shaking my head at this whole thing and my sympathies to the Covid affected family.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 5:48 PM on February 11, 2021 [6 favorites]

"Why do they care so much and why would they go out of their way to deliberately be mean to someone they don’t even know over something so small?"

I've never been a part of an HOA but the horror stories I've read...
posted by NotTheRedBaron at 5:54 PM on February 11, 2021 [22 favorites]

Even the city left the lights up an extra two weeks this year; they thought people needed a little extra joy. Ours tend to be on palm trees and have pink flamingos and dancing manatees, so maybe not strictly "seasonal" but it worked in a dark time, and lasted through the 20th...
posted by halfbuckaroo at 6:17 PM on February 11, 2021 [5 favorites]

I neither celebrate Christmas nor put up seasonal lights, but fuck anyone who tells anyone else to take their lights down, especially but not particularly in this year.
posted by mollweide at 6:38 PM on February 11, 2021 [11 favorites]

I'm not sure if this confirms that people are the worst, or that there's still some good left in us. But I'm glad there's a (somewhat) happy sparkly ending tucked inside it.

That having been said, my upstairs neighbor and her kids tied plastic easter eggs to the tree branches outside our building about 10 years ago and then never took them down, and seeing the tacky bits of plastic junk month after month made me nuts (but not nuts enough to drag a ladder outside to cut them down; I mean, she was the one who did it so shouldn't she clean them up?). And every year the tree would grow higher and more of the eggs would get knocked off during storms. And then she moved away and new people moved in and then they had kids, and sometimes I would think I should ask if they can see the last remaining pinkish orange egg on the one branch that's still there, almost as high as their window. But that would require me looking up at the tree to see if it is actually still there since the last time I saw it. And then cynical me gets grumpy about how they put GARBAGE in our tree and then MOVED AWAY and I say nothing.

But at least I never sent an anonymous note. So there's that.
posted by Mchelly at 6:55 PM on February 11, 2021 [6 favorites]

I neither celebrate Christmas nor put up seasonal lights, but fuck anyone who tells anyone else to take their lights down, especially but not particularly in this year.

Second that.
posted by y2karl at 6:58 PM on February 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is why people should just mind their own business.
posted by simonelikenina at 6:59 PM on February 11, 2021 [8 favorites]

I keep lights up year round on my porch on a timer to go on at dusk.

They make me happy/they are light in a grey and rainy winter climate, and I think they help brighten the place up!

I've been doing this for years (since studying in Sweden where lights and candles seem to be more of a lights-in-the-winter thing and less a Christian holiday thing).
posted by esoteric things at 7:01 PM on February 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Lights around here might go up around Halloween or earlier, don't come down until it's warm out (this week is all negative Fahrenheit, that's not appropriate weather for doing outdoor decorating) and honestly it's a lot of work so it's not uncommon to just leave them up year round anyway. You don't always turn them on in that case, but hey, colorful lights are fun.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:37 PM on February 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

I used to keep a bunch of Mardi Gras beads hung from the mailbox on the porch year round. One day, in about September, I came home one night and found all of them gone, which was kind of a bummer but in their place, someone had left a couple drawings of boobs paper clipped to the mailbox.

I miss my old neighborhood.
posted by thivaia at 8:09 PM on February 11, 2021 [51 favorites]

We all love Christmas.

2020 when COVID was grim and the future was uncertain we decided to have Covid-Christmas in June. We put up our fake tree and exchanged gifts and had a big dinner. There really is no reason we celebrate Christmas on December 25th so nothing prevents you from making up another holiday on another random day.

I’m thinking this year we may celebrate March 12th as the “Last Normal Day”. That was the last day everyone went to school and work.
posted by lowtide at 8:10 PM on February 11, 2021 [13 favorites]

We have a Bigfoot silhouette up on our house. No actual neighbor complaints, plus the delivery drivers seem to love him! So I made a UFO to hover above.

Nothing gets delivery folks to follow instructions like "leave inside the door around the corner from Bigfoot."
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:22 PM on February 11, 2021 [9 favorites]

I'm doing this as well. I have two sets of cascading icicle
lights I'm keeping up until at least March. The winters up
here are cold and desolate, and fuck COVID. Me and my
entire family have had it. This is how I bring some color to
the darkness of 2020-2021.
posted by Chocomog at 8:26 PM on February 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

We have people around here who have a long walkway between where they park their cars up an incline to their house, and they have lights running along the handrail along the grade. They're probably technically "christmas lights" insofar as that is what they were likely sold as, but they're on every night all year, and who the fuck cares?

Who is to say what is christmas lights and what is just lights? I say leave the lights up all year and turn them on when you want and leave them off when you want and just have fun with it.
posted by hippybear at 8:27 PM on February 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

Forgot to mention that (a) a friend of mine has her giant fake pink tree up all year, and (b) a lady of my acquaintance still hasn't taken down her (real) tree in February and said that she had Zoom presentations and no way to hide the background, so everyone's going to see her tree. I see nothing wrong with this.

I love the Mardi Gras boobs and Bigfoot stories here!
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:47 PM on February 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

A couple of houses around us here (out in the woods in rural Virginia) left their lights up, so I too left the solar powered holiday lights on, draped over a few trees out front. I can't tell you how warm a feeling it gives coming home in the evening around dusk. Like we're in this weirdness together, and somehow we have agreed upon this wordlessly between us. As a community, we always salute each other when we pass by in cars. But now we have another little "howdy" sparkling through the trees in February. Sounds so hokey schmalzy as I type this, but I'm grabbing onto it right now.
posted by recklessbrother at 9:13 PM on February 11, 2021 [6 favorites]

I've never understood why 'xmas' lights are acceptable well before the solstice but get less approval just a week or two after. They are solstice lights at our house, going up just after we return to standard time and staying up until almost until standard time ends.... Cuz it's dark and they make it easier to see!
posted by Tandem Affinity at 9:21 PM on February 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Hmmm.... maybe I'll put up some St. Patrick's Day lights. Early.
posted by amtho at 9:27 PM on February 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

One of my neighbors must have some kind of fancy space-age color-changing lights, or else they are very industrious. The lights were red and green until New Year’s Eve, but they’ve been rainbow-colored ever since.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:01 PM on February 11, 2021 [5 favorites]

Instead of a traditional Xmas tree this year, my nephew decided we should have a fake palm tree. He decided to plug it into the socket behind the couch, we can't figure out why. So I decided to leave it on, it's LEDs so it only draws a few watts. My neighbors have commented on it, all positivly. I'll leave them on until I have to move the couch for cleaning.
posted by Marky at 10:19 PM on February 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

I absolutely get this. It's why my porch skeletons went up a month before Halloween and stayed up for... (checks calendar) going on a year and a half now.
posted by FatherDagon at 11:20 PM on February 11, 2021 [5 favorites]

I have a one bulb fixture outside my door on my condo. I just got one of those internet light bulbs I can turn on and off from anywhere AND I can change the color on them. When bored, I change the color. Sometimes 2 or 3 times an hour. At least once a day. My son in the military came home for a visit recently and the bulb was red. He asked if it was a hot LZ. So I changed it to green. He said, if you are up when I come home from the bar, make the bulb red for hot LZ and green for asleep. I made it purple. I am a dad. I may be asleep, but I am listening for the door closing and locking sound even in my sleep.

Different color lights are fun. Christmas lights are just as fun.
posted by AugustWest at 11:38 PM on February 11, 2021 [9 favorites]

My neighbors put a giant spider in their yard for Halloween. Then they put a Santa hat on it for Christmas. It's still there now, clutching a heart-shaped box with flies in it.
posted by aws17576 at 12:19 AM on February 12, 2021 [38 favorites]

Man it's tough, because I'm generally team lights and very excited to have nice ways of bringing cheer on dark nights, christmas or no. But I've lived in a few places where lights from others could easily shine into my bedroom and disrupt my sleep, and that sucked. I would generally not mind over the holidays, but I hated being the grouch who would say hey these are disturbing my home, can you take them down. Thankfully not the case now, but it's a bit of a shitty thing to feel intruded on in your own home.
posted by Carillon at 1:07 AM on February 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

Just tell them you're celabrating Chinese New Year.
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 1:32 AM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah, we've still got half ours up (and that's quite a lot of lights - see the one FPP I have to my name). We switched them all off briefly around 12th night, and I genuinely got complaints from neighbours, so I just disabled the more Christmas-specific ones and left stars and other bits shining. We're moving house in the next few weeks, so I'll have to take them down at some point really soon, but I'll probably put a few token bits up at the new place (it's only about a mile down the road, so the current neighbours'll have to go for a walk). Not sure what the new neighbours will make of them, but they better get used to the idea pretty quick :)
posted by PeteTheHair at 2:24 AM on February 12, 2021

We do not call it a Christmas Tree we call it our Winter Tree as it provides light and joy through the darkest days of winter.

Similarly, we refer to our street-facing low power consumption color LED's as "winter lights", brightening up the long dark nights of winter, and leave them up from the 1st of November to the 28th of February every year.
posted by fairmettle at 3:07 AM on February 12, 2021

I discovered a similar story yesterday, about "Frank the Christmas Gargoyle".

A woman had a gargoyle statue on her porch, and a neighbor left her a pissy note to say that a gargoyle statue was "not in the Christmas spirit" and urged her to "rectify the situation immediately". So - she put a Santa hat and a beard on the gargoyle, and put a little tree on the porch next to him. She got another note of complaint and added an Elf On The Shelf and a snowman ornament. She got another note and added a "Die Hard" poster, and then added a skeleton of a cat dressed in a hat and a scarf. Another note, she added a dog skeleton similarly dressed up. She also had a stuffed hippo in an ugly Christmas sweater and added that, and got another note saying "Hippos have nothing to do with Christmas!" Which prompted her to add two more stuffed hippos and a sign saying "Hippos are Christmas AF, there's even a song about it!"

Basically, any time her neighbor sent her a note of complaint, she added another item, the tackier the better. She was having a blast, her other neighbors were delighted, and the pissy neighbor was getting more and more annoyed, and the whole thing went viral and she turned it into a pledge drive for her local food bank.

...And apparently it's still going on - she has started a whole Facebook page devoted to "Frank the Gargoyle" and has a Valentines' theme for Frank, and the neighbor is still getting more and more pissed off.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:23 AM on February 12, 2021 [17 favorites]

Our Halloween decorations went up three years ago and just kind of forgot to come down.
posted by signal at 4:35 AM on February 12, 2021

OH GOD THE GARGOYLE SAGA!!!!!
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:21 AM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

There are people around here who have lights on ALL the time and it sucks BIG time. Despite multiple anonymous notes they have done nothing about it. I remind myself it is my choice to live here and that they are a municipality that has a lot more important things to worry about. Like plowing the end of my driveway shut when I just cleared it!
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 5:27 AM on February 12, 2021

Well there's your problem. Who the hell would do anything a nasty anonymous note tells them to do?
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:47 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

Of course, chili lights never get taken down.
posted by sudogeek at 5:58 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

Our Christmas wreath is still hanging on our front door.

From Christmas 2019.

I hadn't gotten around to taking it down when the pandemic hit, and since then time doesn't mean anything, so I'm leaving it up until this thing is over.
posted by madcaptenor at 6:44 AM on February 12, 2021

We have two, young maples in our front yard. This year, we wrapped them with solar mini- lights. They are still wrapped, going to stay that way. Our neighborhood is fairly eclectic (there is a year-round, inflatable dinosaur a few streets over) so I doubt anyone will complain. And, they make me happy.
posted by pearlybob at 7:15 AM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

I did a castle theme for Halloween last year. I completely covered the front of the house in a stone backdrop, and hung a blow-up dragon from the eaves. I flung candy at kids with a catapult. The neighborhood toddlers, ours included, LOVED the dragon. The stone walls have come down, the Christmas lights have gone up and come down, but the dragon remains. My kid cries if he sees it turn off. Another kid who lives down the street says "(my kid)'s house!" whenever his parents read "Dragons Love Tacos."

It may now be a permanent fixture. I had meant to decorate it for Thanksgiving and Christmas but never got around to it, but maybe I'll put in some renewed effort for Valentine's Day.
posted by natabat at 7:18 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

I totally understand concerns about light shining into your house. My neighborhood has terrible street lighting, but I swear the one streetlight on my whole block shines directly into my bedroom, and I had to get a blackout curtain for that one window. But that seems like an issue that could be dealt with by knocking on someone's door and saying "I hate to be a pain, but your Christmas lights shine into my window, and they're making it hard to sleep. Can you turn them off at ten?" Seriously: you don't need to be passive-aggressive. You can just talk to your neighbors like a grown-up adult person.

I actually wonder if the advent of LED lights, which use less energy, is going to lead to an increase in year-round decorative outdoor lights. And the fancy color-changing ones are expensive now, but I wouldn't be surprised if they got cheaper and more people could afford the ones that you can change for different seasons and occasions.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:56 AM on February 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

(Maybe not knocking on the door in a pandemic. But you could leave a note with your name and phone number.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:59 AM on February 12, 2021

Shamed? Light pollution vs. the right to see the night sky.
posted by mfoight at 8:05 AM on February 12, 2021

Shamed? Light pollution vs. the right to see the night sky.

This assumes that the reason people were complaining about her was because "i'm an amateur astronomer and this is light pollution". I would bet you that this is not the case, however - I would bet that the reason people were complaining was because "Christmas is over and therefore Christmas lights should be taken down because that's what people are supposed to do, by gum".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:24 AM on February 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

I left up some lights this year, the ones that run through my front garden. I also installed some solar fairy lights in the back yard after my daughter said it wasn't fair that her bedroom looked out on darkness while those of us at the front of the house got pretty lights. We've been on lockdown for months and there's been a 8pm curfew since January with no end in immediate sight so we will take whatever pleasure we can get.

There's a house down the road that put up an Olaf Christmas sculpture thing on their front porch the year that Frozen 1 came out and they have never taken it down. It has now become a study in decay. Every year his white "snow" gets a little darker, holes grow and his smile looks more menacing. We live in a very boring suburban area where everyone mows their lawns and plants geraniums so I am obsessed with the Olaf zombie and how long he will last. At this rate I estimate he will survive for another 5 years or so, even with our brutal temperature shifts from winter to summer. I will miss him when he is gone.
posted by Cuke at 8:46 AM on February 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

We also have an Olaf Zombie but he is an inflatable that is slowly dragging and getting buried in the snow he is also nominally made of.

I actually wonder if the advent of LED lights, which use less energy, is going to lead to an increase in year-round decorative outdoor lights.

In Vermont there was a whole thing this year. Basically the winter was shaping up to be SO LONG and so the Governor did a whole Vermont Lights the Way thing where people who might not even otherwise be doing outdoor lights did them up. And it was cheering. I can totally understand if you're someplace super dark and the lights kinda brighten up the whole place in a bad way (I think turning them off at some decent night time is polite) but in a lot of places, this is not really the case since there's so much outdoor lighting anyhow. Getting to walk around and see people's variations on a theme around lighting up their houses was actually a thing I enjoyed this year and I'm usually a pretty humbuggy person w/r/t xmas.
posted by jessamyn at 9:27 AM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Nelson:

"Christians are confusing ... Who the fuck cares if they stay up until Spring?

It's the same ethos that says that sex should only ever be for procreation. And that masturbation is a terrible sin. Basically deny all earthly pleasures. Hard to understand how such a joyless religion would ever catch on."

I don't know if this is too much of a derail, but Christianity is very mixed on earthly pleasures. The same folks who said sex should only be for procreation also did quite a lot of wonderful music and architecture.

Saying that Christmas lights should be down after some moderate number of weeks isn't the same thing as being against Christmas lights in general-- not to mention that I don't think Christmas light observance is a formal part of Christianity.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:23 AM on February 12, 2021

Light pollution vs. the right to see the night sky.

This is Long Island.
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on February 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

Light pollution vs. the right to see the night sky.

This is Long Island.


Hahahaha well shit, now I am loving the idea that my building's icicle lights are the sole obstacle between Chicago astronomers and their life's work.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:35 AM on February 12, 2021 [11 favorites]

I'm pretty grateful to the neighbors who still have a few multicolor lights on, which I see every night from the kitchen. My mental health is so shaky lately that anything, especially sparkly and colorful things, makes me feel that tiny bit better. I only took down my picture window lights because they burned out and it was too late for me to go get replacements.

I liked what some other neighbors, whose lights I can't see unless I go for a walk near dark, did--they usually have red and white lights along their roof and walkways, and red lights on shrubs and such, and they took the large C6 type red and white ones and staked them in the front yard in a heart shape. Clever. I kinda hope they leave them up past the 14th.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 11:47 AM on February 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

Who the hell would do anything a nasty anonymous note tells them to do?

I will do what the creepy anonymous note-leavers do because they were threatening my car if I parked in front of their house again. Which was totally legal, but frankly, I don't want to deal with Teh Crazy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:34 PM on February 12, 2021

We trimmed our house with a set of app-controlled color changing lights. When spouse expressed concern that the response might be negative, I reminded him that he was old enough to be a little bit eccentric. So the color and blink patterns gets changed on different holidays and we are that nice-kind-of-strange-couple who have lights on all year round.

He also puts additional winter holiday lights on the landscaping They have not come down yet. Maybe in the spring. Right now, it feels like a bit of necessary happiness.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 1:07 PM on February 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

Light pollution vs. the right to see the night sky.

This is Long Island.

is this where I plug my high school best friend who's an astronomer in Brooklyn? I guess it is!
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:04 PM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

I managed to take our Christmas lights down by Martin Luther King, Jr day, with great effort. Then we used the multicolored ones (not Christmassy) to spell out hope. We're planning to leave that up indefinitely. (Don't worry, they're on a timer.) I do have neighbors stop me every now and then to say they've appreciated our lights.
posted by Margalo Epps at 6:36 PM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

I took my tree and its lights down in time for the last curbside tree pickup by the city (late mid-January); but what lights I have left up will stay up for the winter. Lots of people in my 'hood here in Montreal leave theirs up every winter, and especially now...
posted by Philofacts at 8:08 PM on February 12, 2021

I totally understand concerns about light shining into your house. My neighborhood has terrible street lighting, but I swear the one streetlight on my whole block shines directly into my bedroom, and I had to get a blackout curtain for that one window. But that seems like an issue that could be dealt with by knocking on someone's door and saying "I hate to be a pain, but your Christmas lights shine into my window, and they're making it hard to sleep. Can you turn them off at ten?" Seriously: you don't need to be passive-aggressive. You can just talk to your neighbors like a grown-up adult person.

When I was a kid, our next door neighbours had the whole Santa & reindeers extravaganza on their front lawn with spotlights that shone directly into my parent's bedroom. Not cool, and words were exchanged. I'm glad no one in my current 'hood does that.
posted by Philofacts at 8:23 PM on February 12, 2021

Burn those lights until the heavens fall.
keeping them up til May.
posted by clavdivs at 10:13 PM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

One of the best things I did for myself was put up color changing lights. There's a color scheme for every holiday in the app, and one can always make their own too. They cheer me every evening.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:07 AM on February 13, 2021

Also, people who police other's Christmas decorations need a hobby.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:09 AM on February 13, 2021

I live in the north and only take my outdoor lights down when I can do so without my fingers going numb. It is currently -4 F (“feels like -20”), and an entire strand is currently buried in the yew bushes, which are crushed in snow. This would have been the year to do a ridiculous yard/front step display without items disappearing - I live by a high school and have never gone multiple days without witnessing teenage shenanigans before.
posted by Maarika at 10:32 AM on February 13, 2021

Growing up in the country, you learn not to just go up and knock on the doors of people you don’t know because five times out of ten they answer casually holding a gun.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:47 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

A nasty note is still not the answer.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:20 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

someone had left a couple drawings of boobs paper clipped to the mailbox.

I had a really hard time parsing this. "What is boobs paper?" I asked myself.
posted by Orlop at 4:29 PM on February 15, 2021

A nasty note sucks--I've gotten that kind of a lot--but it sure beats open confrontation/screaming. Or guns. Or cops.

That said, the boredpanda article about "Karen" the noteleaver and all the toys being left out on the porch strikes me as being the most fun way to handle the situation. I'm happy the porch lady isn't bothered by the whole thing. That said, that Karen is obvious persistent crazy and I do kind of wonder if she escalated beyond threatening to contact authorities and throwing the toys around the porch after this article was written. Someone like that probably cannot STAND being ignored and not getting her way....
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:00 PM on February 15, 2021

I can't imagine why anyone would be offended by Christmas lights. I mean, who really cares?

On the other hand, there are still dozens of campaign signs for Trump 2020 in yards despite local laws mandating their removal a week after the election.
posted by drstrangelove at 6:48 AM on February 16, 2021