Lighting the December Nights

This weekend proved to be unexpectedly warm (that is, not biting cold) and November-like. Much rain on Saturday morning instead of snow. Go figure.

I took the opportunity to light the outdoor lights, which have been in place since last year, when I had to replace most of the older strings. I also festooned one of our small evergreens with the new, aforementioned LED lights. Then I put out one plastic and one ceramic snowman, neither of which lights. Yuriko acquired the ceramic snowman last summer at a yard sale, and he's not bad looking.

Here in our suburban neighborhood there seem to be about as many inflatables as ever, but icicle lights, so popular in the late '90s and early '00s, are now pretty scarce. Replacing regular outdoor, wall-mounted lights with red and green bulbs, once a novelty, now seems fairly common, sometimes to supplement other decor, sometimes as the only decor. One house not far away put in red and green lights to replace the usual white, but also opposite-colored lights at ground level, shining up at the wall-mounted lights. That is, green shines up to a red light, and red shines up to a green light. It's a pretty effect.

One family down the block, who always decorates for Halloween with items that include an animated dark figure sporting sinister blue-light eyes, also decorates with some elaborateness for Christmas. They've put out my favorite lawn decoration so far this year: some Christmas chickens. No, really. The ensemble includes lighted figures, the largest of them a chicken with a scarf and a top hat and a raised baton. Smaller chicken figures (chicks?) are nearby, apparently taking musical direction from the larger chicken. I've never seen the likes of it before.