Pulling the Plug on the Holidays

I’m on a crusade to get my kids to do three things. Clean their rooms, flush the toilet and turn out the lights. I don't think that it's too much to ask. I follow them around the house picking up socks, flushing and flicking off the light switches every day. I have to. Our electric bill is outrageous. My children celebrate the festival of lights all year long. Wherever they go, they leave an illuminated trail. Lights are on in their bedrooms after they leave for school, lights are on in the bathroom after they brush their teeth, lights in the kitchen, the basement, even the front porch light blazes like an eternal monument to the utility company 24-hours a day.

Yesterday, my husband Harris said he was sure that a UFO had landed in our living room. As he walked up the street, on the way home from work, he saw our house ablaze with lights. Bright light, he said, was seeping through cracks in the eaves and escaping under the threshold. He said that when Lewis came to the door he was silhouetted in blinding lights - like the tyke in Close Encounters just before he was abducted by the mother ship. All this wattage, and we haven’t even put up the Christmas lights ... yet.


Here it is practically the shortest day of the year. It’s getting darker much earlier. But we don’t really notice because there are lights everywhere. We go from our bright homes, to the mall (where it’s always mid-day) and back home where we spend our evenings basking in the glow of the TV set or the computer screen. Even outside, the street lights and city lights obliterate the stars shining in the heavens. If the Magi were traveling today, they’d end up on Rte. 1 instead of at a stable in Bethlehem.


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