Growing up in the only Jewish household of my suburban neighborhood, I often dreaded the arrival of the holiday season. On the day after Thanksgiving, when everyone’s Christmas decor seemed to simultaneously appear, festive red and green lights lined the roofs and windows of almost every house on my block. Some homes even had inflatable Santas and sleighs, and light-up deer whose heads would move back and forth on their own.
Then there was my house: an electric menorah sat in the front window, which was lined with modest blue and white lights, a product of my father’s labor. How embarrassing, I thought, to be the only house sporting lights in this color scheme, the only house that didn’t partake in the over-the-top Christmas decor. Some years I would beg my dad to throw some red or green into the mix, but to no avail. What must all our neighbors think?
Probably, my seven-year-old brain was giving this much more thought than anyone else. But the feeling of comparison, and the pressure to at least seem like I fit in with those around me always remained tucked away in the back of my brain.
I recently stumbled upon Light up Corvallis 2021, a Facebook group dedicated to showing off the town’s best, flashiest holiday displays, along with where they could be found. Admittedly, some of the less-than-cheerful holiday memories came flooding back to me as I looked at each post. While the group’s goal is to “make this dark season a little bit brighter”, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy at the merging of Christmas light displays and social media. Whose house is decked out best? Now we don’t even need to leave our own living rooms to know.
I wondered, how much energy do these intricate holiday displays end up utilizing? And how much must all of this cost? There are larger issues at hand than my own childhood insecurities coming back to haunt me.
Big Displays, Bigger Issues
Cost and energy usage depend on many things, of course, such as the number of lights and the amount of time they’re left on. But one determining factor is the style of lights used to decorate — incandescent lights use about six times the wattage of more modern LED lights, costing around six times more as well. In Oregon, a house with an entirely incandescent light display equivalent to Clark Griswold’s in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation would cost around $2,959 after about a month of use. Suddenly, my family’s modest display makes a lot more sense to me.
Some of the houses featured in the Facebook group make the Griswold household look lackluster in comparison. One house had at least 25 inflatable characters spread across the yard. Another had every tree and shrub in the yard covered in rainbow string lights.
Holiday light displays consume at least 6 terawatts — or 6 trillion watts — of energy per year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. This leads to an increase in greenhouse gases and other pollutants as well. According to the Energy Saving Trust, Christmas light displays produce enough carbon dioxide to fill 15,500 hot air balloons. The houses with the biggest and best displays may also have the biggest carbon footprint.
My intention in writing this is not to be a thief of holiday joy, but to bring attention to issues that grow in importance and urgency with the passing of each year. Is the spreading of holiday cheer necessarily correlated with overconsumption and spikes in energy usage? There are ways to avoid, or at least lessen the negative impacts of eye-catching light displays, with a little extra consideration.
Perhaps Corvallis’s homemade holiday displays can continue to make the dark season brighter while helping keep the planet’s future bright as well.
By Olivia Goodfriend
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