Our neighbours put up some coloured Christmas lights and my partner is losing their shit over it. Their view is that Christmas lights should be white, decorations white silver and gold and nothing more.

The family is having none of this tantrum and we are encouraging the neighbours the other side to put up coloured lights too!

It reminded me though of Christmas at my gran’s when I was a kid and there was an almighty row about opening gifts before or after Christmas dinner.

Does your family have any Christmas obsessions that others in the family have no time for?

by Slow_Apricot8670

38 comments

  1. White (warm white obv) lights and coloured reflective ornaments in red green gold silver and maybe blue if you’re a bit edgy is the best balance.

    Not against coloured lights, these days I’ll take anything that isnt piercing blue LEDs or flashing.

    Decorations should be colourful and warming. No purple and silver rigid colour schemes. Just bung some shiny stuff up with a bit of greenery.

  2. > and my partner is losing their shit over it.

    Doesn’t sound very Christmassy.

  4. Regarding losing their shit, my problem with modern lights is they’re LED-based, and are often way too bright- the blues, purples and sometimes greens especially.

    So I can sort of understand only using yellow, white, red, and green colours which are more traditional. And it’s often incandescent bulbs that have the sort of light that doesn’t dry out your eyes when looking at them.

    I’ve heard that manufactures are making more warm-hued LEDs that might restrain some of the more harsher colours, but I’ve not seen them in person to verify.

  6. I grew up in a household where it was strictly Silver/Gold/White everything, no exception. I hated it then, and still do now.
    Now that I have control you better believe whatever coloured lights I can get my mitts on, I’m having up. We even have a festive frog outside!

    I miss the lights where you could individually change the bulbs. My sister slowly changed nearly half the cream lights to yellow/orange ones one year by tactically replacing them. Took two weeks for my mum to notice and when she did, my good Lord hell opened for a second. Definitely worth it!

  7. The more colourful and tacky the better I say! 
    I’m upset we can’t seem to find foil ceiling decorations. 

  8. I like coloured lights but also like warm white lights too.
    Cool white lights are a no.

    Static or gentle twinkling lights. Disco or epilepsy modes are a no no.

    Acceptable colours for the main decorations are red, green, gold and silver. Individual decorations can of course have other colours too but the main colours should not be blue, purple, white etc.

    Tree should be green, not white or silver or any other ghastly inventions.

  11. If I was your neighbour, I would put up 2 sets of white lights and then about 40 sets of coloured ones just to make your partner EXTRA mad lol

  12. As long as they’re not blue flashing lights. I get fed up of constantly having to guess whether it’s an ambulance or decorations when driving around

  13. I’m only against the bright blue LEDs that give me a headache

  14. Nah, British Christmas is supposed to be extremely tacky imo, it’s a tradition. I’ve always had a disliking for the more modern decorations.

  16. My mums tree the past few years has had all white/clear/silver decorations with bright white lights. It looks awful and I call it her Nazi tree to wind her up.

  17. We have multiple trees to keep everyone happy:

    * ‘Classy’ one in the front room – warm white lights, tasteful decs
    * Dining room – coloured lights, all sorts of crap hanging off the branches
    * Back room – Pink lights. Daughters b’day is xmas day so that’s her ‘birthday tree’. She’s mid 20s now but I’m not going to be the one to tell her it’s not going up…

  18. I don’t love coloured lights, but I don’t mind when other people have them.

    Mine are all white twinkle lights – but the ornaments on the tree are a complete mish mash. Things my daughter has made through the years, paper ornaments I made this year, ornaments that are symbolic or passed down and some I’ve been given or got on holiday.

    The lights are a backdrop for the ornaments imo.

  19. Urgh, I can’t stand plain white Xmas lights, I hate that that became a trend that has stuck around. It’s cold enough without making everything look monochrome and icy – get some gaudy coloured lights up!

  20. I don’t like cold toned lights. No blue or white for me. I really dislike flashing lights as they give me a headache.

  22. One of the managers in our office found some foil decs clearing out her dads garage they are now hung up in our office we are all of an age remembering them and absolutely love them

  23. I love those old coloured lights and it took years of searching to find ones like my mums old Woolworths ones (that she still uses!)

  24. Our Christmas tree growing up always looked like a festive unicorn threw up on it. Coloured lights, tinsel was originally just purple and turquoise but we bought other colours over the years and threw them on too. Foil decorations. Homemade random decorations. It was glorious.

  25. I prefer white but I also like coloured lights I have to follow a theme with my tree and coloured lights wouldn’t work if I had the room I’d have another tree with a different theme that I could have coloured light’s.

  26. My wife is a white lights only fascist – I want all the colours the more gaudy the better! She also flat refuses to eat anything for Christmas lunch other than what we cooked on our first Christmas at home together. We’re vegetarian, so there’s no “traditional” menu, and lots of delicious sounding options but we’re locked into the same fucking nut roast that we cooked a decade ago because it’s “the tradition” now.

  28. I wish I had a little going on in my life that the colour of the neighbours Christmas lights could consume me

  29. Christmas lights look more fun and Christmassy when they’re coloured. Your partner sounds like one of those people fond of millennial grey decor, lol. 

  30. I remember the sixties etc when we had paper Chinese style decorations that came flat packed and opened out. We had to make our own chains to hang across the ceiling, basically cut strips of tissue paper and glue them into interlocking circles to make a chain. Also copious amounts of balloons stuck to the ceiling! How times have changed!

  31. Warm white LEDs in our household with gold silver and red decor.

    The multicoloured lights remind me too much of the ones we had in the 80s and the annual ritual of holding your breath as you switched them on, praying that none of the bulbs would blow because you’d have to spend half an hour finding it before the others would work!

  32. But red and green are Christmas colours!

    My older relatives, it is obligatory to have a Christmas pudding. Only a couple of people eat it. The rest goes in the bin. 

  34. I don’t give a shit about white/gold/coloured, as long as you don’t hang flashing blue lights outside your house where they’re visible from the road that make me start looking around for an emergency services vehicle because I see blue flickers in my rear view mirror

  35. Your partner is weird. If they are actually angry and not just eye rolling in disagreement, Id remember this and start looking for red flags I might have missed.

  36. Coloured fairy lights are for xmas, warm white ones are for year-round illumination imo 🙂

  38. Nah more colour the better. We had this discussion last weekend walking through our town centre. All decked out but so cold & miserable feeling cos they’ve gone all blue, it’s hateful & a crime against Xmas. Rather they hadn’t bothered at all.

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