In our neighborhood you can’t have them up past January 31st. Seems reasonable to me. Most people have them down by New Year’s Day or New Year’s Eve. Only one or two houses seem to hold out until January 6th. The latest we’ve taken them down was January 8th, our kids had already been back to school for a week. We usually get them down on New Year’s Day.
My D would’ve loved Minnie and Mickey blow up decorations, but I don’t think they had them when she was little.
We’ve never had any restrictions on the kinds and colors of Christmas lights/decorations we can have. In the HOA rules it only says it can’t be a fire hazard, can’t be offensive (say a blow up middle finer), and can’t block the street, driveways, or fire hydrants.
In our neighborhood, it seems to be 50/50 in terms of decorating. Half decorate, half don’t. Our neighborhood is quite the mix of old people, empty nesters, young families, families with older kids, married w/o kids. So, if you don’t decorate it wouldn’t be weird, but if you do that’s cool too. And out of the houses that do decorate, very few go all out.
I just love the look of candles in all the windows and did that to our MA house. AZ is such a bummer for Christmas. Santa hats atop saguaro cactus, just no.
Do people put out luminarias at Christmas in Arizona? I was in Phoenix 40 years ago at Christmastime and saw some houses with luminarias lining the front walk. Haha, Santa Hats on saguaros cracks me up!
I always loved the look of candles in the windows and got close to doing it, but H didn’t go for it. And since he’s the one who moves all boxes of Christmas stuff into the house from the garage and for years put up all the outside lights, I let him decide on this one. Plus we don’t have a ton of front facing windows anyway.
Lots of luminarias. We light up our walkway and courtyard with luminarias Christmas Eve. Also, every year, we attend Las Noches de las Luminarias at the desert botanical garden. The nighttime garden is magical lit with thousands of pathway luminarias and several stunning Chihulys. It’s one of the best things Phoenix has to offer.
We have very large double front doors and always get two Costco wreaths (28" @ $19ea). They last forever and fit the scale of the doors. Impulse bought two big poinsettias this year. Not sure where we’ll put them, but they look good on the front patio for now.
MIL lived in a neighborhood where everyone put luminarias along the sidewalk on Christmas Eve. When she was too frail to complete the task, neighbors would step in to fill her small stretch. Not sure if they were being nice or annoyed about the gap. She chose to embrace the former.
Once….just once…DH put lights on the outside of our house. They were all red (a gift from a retired electrician who made tons of strands…all red). I was out shopping, and when I came home…there were red lights all around the porch roof, red lights wrapped around the porch columns like candy canes. Red lights on the shrubs…and red light bulbs in the porch sconces.
It looked like a bordello.
It stayed up that season…but never was put up again…
We have candles in the windows, a wreath with white lights on the front door and garland with red bows on the railing front steps. We also have another, smaller front door with the garland, red bows, an old sled outlined with white lights and ice skates.
The next town down the road is Newtown, CT. The main street is lined with old colonial and saltbox homes from the 1700’s. They all have white candles in the windows and wreath’s with red bows on the door. On Christmas eve, they line their walkways with luminaries. The Christmas less than 2 weeks after Sandy Hook, everyone used 26 luminaries and shaped them into hearts or angel wings on the front lawns. It was a beautiful yet heart-wrenching tribute.
We do icicle lights. We have them attached to furring strips and we just have to hang the boards to permanent hooks that are under the eaves. It takes me about ten minutes. Easy up and easy down. We also have a lighted wreath above the garage door that I can hang from the windows above the doors. We only need the ladder to hide the extension cord. I also have a picket fence with an arbor that I put white lights on. I always put them on when the weather is still nice but they too are easy to put on and take off. I like how they light up the dark night.
With the kids gone and we parents older…. it’s down to just a lit wreath (on timer) near the front door. For 25 years we put up the old fashioned larger bulb strings in the roofline, but this is the second year we haven’t done it. Makes me a bit sad, so I’m glad the lit tree looks nice in the front window.
My mom is Catholic and my dad is Jewish so I grew up with a lot of unique traditions that I still follow. We have 4 pillars on our porch so 2 have blue lights and 2 have white. I made my wreath out of silver ribbon, looks like this, but not white. No blow up stuff, no bushes lit, and no red/green color combo.
I put up simple green garland with white lights on our front porch railings and one swagged across the top of the front doors. My parents moved in with us and brought two lighted, potted trees, so I’m going to put them on either side of the doors. @BunsenBurner My mom insisted I needed wreaths for the front doors; I don’t like them either, but I had already disappointed her when I said I didn’t care for the 6’ nutcracker out there. We have a very small front porch, and it started to look like Christmas exploded out there
Good sized wreath with red bow on front door. Door is flanked by two potted dwarf blue spruce trees, so I put white lights on those during the holiday season. With carriage lights on either side of door, I think that provides a nice easy up/easy down solution to decorating. That said, I love a good light display by my neighbors. I can enjoy and let them worry about getting them down in sub-freezing temps after the fact!
H would hate doing it but we’d have lights and Santa hats on the cactus if we lived there, too.
When we lived in FL a lot of folks (including ourselves) decorated their palm trees with lights. A few had pink flamingos wearing Santa hats and a necklace of colored lights. In the riverfront neighborhoods there were always some houses with fake lighthouses in the yard that were decorated for the holidays. Others had luminarias along their walkways. The youth group at the church we attended then sold luminarias each year as a fund raiser.
We got a kick out of how very different most displays were there. I can appreciate the elegant and traditional look of simple window candles and wreaths, but enjoy the fun ones more.
My wife likes to have a seasonal wreath on our front door; so last weekend, once Thanksgiving was in the rear view mirror, she changed out the wreath with autumnal leaves/plants for a spruce wreath with a red bow; and she switched out a vase of mums on a stand next to our front sidewalk with an old pewter mug full of winter greenery – pine boughs, holly, magnolia leaves, pine cones, etc.
We do not put up anything else, but we enjoy walking around our neighborhood and seeing yard displays from our creative neighbors. One family usually has about 15 or so Christmas-themed inflatables in their front yard, and we are anxiously awaiting for them to be set out.
Haha, oh dear! I’ve seen some houses decorated with all red lights. My stepdad wanted to get red and green light bulbs to put in the lights at the end of his driveway. Well they were all out of green but he did find red. So, he used just red. We arrived from the airport one night and you could see the red lights from down the street. H said we should get him a beaded curtain to go with the red lights!
I think the funniest has to be my SIL’s husband . He and his son and wife decided to go a little more elaborate then they usually do. H’s BIL decided to string lights criss cross across the garage door. Well, when it got dark and my SIL pulled up she saw three huge red XXX flashing on the garage door, like it’s an adult venue of some sort. Needless, to say the next year he went with a totally different pattern on the garage door
When my H was younger he knew a guy who got in trouble for pranking someone by using lights to spell out Merry T****es on someone’s lawn. H still laughs every time he tells that. What’s funny, is we still know the guy who did this, he’s a CPA with a wife and two kids. Clearly, he’s come a long way and matured quite a bit since then.
