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December 15, 2003 - Holiday Lights
It was cold on Sunday night. The rain earlier in the day had left the air crisp and clean. And through the warm lighted windows of a slow moving green car, the dedicated staff of edhat.com marveled at the Christmas lights hung from the rooftops with care (in hope that Saint Edhat soon would be there). We’d be checking for sizes and types, lights big and small. We’d be checking for ribbons and icicles, and stars that don’t fall. We’d be looking for messages of holiday cheer, for inflatable Santas and moving reindeer ... and we would be making a list, checking the lights. Gotta make sure our data is right!
Yes, we looked at all the beautiful Christmas lights to see what people had climbed atop ladders to decorate their roofs with this year. In Christmas past it was just big colored lights. Then came small white lights, then small colored, then white icicles, then colored icicles. And of course there are reindeer outlined in white lights (moving and stationary). In recent years we have seen inflatable Santas and the high tech ribbon lights. So many choices (and with everything being on sale at Longs all through January) creates a winter wonderland full of variety and color.
While driving slow around Mission Canyon, and the East and West Sides the dedicated staff saw lights galore. Mostly we saw them in bunches. It seems if your neighbor does lights, then there’s a good chance that you do too. For instance, on Gillespie and on Islay there were full blocks of lights, while whole stretches of Anacapa and Garden had none. Overall, about 1 in 8 houses had lights.
The most popular lights were icicle (42% - 81% of which were white), followed by small lights (35% - 61% white), big lights (14% - only 8% white), and ribbon lights (2%). The highest color/type combination were white icicle lights (34%). Flashing lights, which remind some people more of a “No-Tell” Motel than Christmas were used sparingly (only 7% of all lights).
We saw reindeer, Santas, and snowmen, but the most amazing thing that appeared before our wondering eyes was a towering 10 foot high Grinch-Who-Stole-Christmas!
Almost all of the contestants in the daily contest picked the correct answer, icicle lights. A random drawing in our lucky edhat determined eturenchalk (93117) as the winner of free movies tickets ... Elf anyone?
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