LED christmas lights don't have soul

garlands and bobbles, originally uploaded by squirrel_of_snooze.

now that the holiday season is almost upon us, i've noticed a few blogs posting about how important it is to use LED christmas lights this year. before i dive into everything wrong with the LED christmas light, i should first point out that i consider myself a pretty environmentally aware person. i studied conservation in university, and when i was 6, during a family outing to a christmas tree farm, i yelled at a little boy for throwing his styrofoam cup into the wiener roasting fire because it was going to "release CFCs into the atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer." i was precocious. so even though in vancouver we're blessed with a seemingly never ending source of relatively clean(ish) energy in the form of hydroelectricity, i still know that it's important to cut down on energy consumption. i don't leave things pluggled in, i live in the dark, etc... but christmas lights... i just can't go there!

the trouble with LED christmas lights is that they have no soul. unless you want to go super old-world, and risk burning your house down with candles, only tungsten lights twinkle. i don't know about you but i don't see the point of putting lights on my tree if they're going to look dead and cold. LED manufacturers try to cute them up with cheesy snowflake or icicle "festive" shapes or ice-like detailing, but they still look like the holiday lights from a brave new world.

LED lights might get programmed to flicker in the vain attempt to mimic a twinkle, but all that programming is tacky, and so very '80s suburbia in a bad way. in a tasteful world, these lights would be left to teenagers decorating their family rec rooms for their days of drug experimentation and all-weekend video game tournaments.



1. oversized, dull, and blahhhh
2. decorations for a holiday rave
3. soulless and cold

i understand that LED lights cut back on energy bills by 90%, and it's pretty amazing just how significant that is really. it's one of those things you can easily do to affect actual change and i'm sure these things make al and leo all warm and fuzzy inside. the problem is that they look like crap. so this year i will decorate my tree with tungsten lights, but only turn them on 10% of the time. will that concession get me any green karma this holiday season?