Eight years ago I made one of the best decisions of my life. That was the year I stopped putting up outdoor Christmas lights.

What first started out as a few multi-colored lights around our shrubs, progressed to lighting all the trees, the eaves, and visions of interactive audio and video dancing in my head. I had to – the neighbors were keeping up.

Every year I had to keep adding more lights so that I wasn’t the lamest looking display in the neighborhood. Each ensuing year became more stressful than the previous year. The setup time went from hours, to days, to weekends. The dread of having the post Christmas blues combined with the increasing manual labor required to take the decorations down became too much. For such a happy time of the year, I was miserable Continue Reading…