My Town Monday: Dark and Cold

Short post since I'm mired in grading.

It's about this time of year that people start turning off and taking down their Christmas lights. It's "too late" to leave them up.

But I wish they would.

Fine, fine, take down Santa and the creepy reindeer skeletons. But leave up the little lights. At least in places like Livingston County, Michigan.

See, it's January here. The sun rises about 8am and sets by 5pm. Yeah. The sun only works a 9 hour day this time of year.

So, seeing those little twinkles of white or colored lights is rather nice in the middle of the afternoon when it's already dark out. It provides a little bit of cheery light to contrast the cold, gray/white snow and the bare trees and the gray cloudy skies.

Who decided, anyway, that Christmas ends so early? It's okay to start Christmas festivities a month before the actual event, but less than two weeks afterward, one can be hated by the neighbors for continuing to have their lights on?

It's cold and dark. We really should be hibernating. Since we can't, how about leaving some cheery little lights on, to ward off the winter blues.