I concur. I am all for reducing energy consumption. However, if you want a splash of light at Christmas time, the LED lights just don't cut it. I think one either needs to decide to celebrate Christmas with REAL lights or make the environment the priority and skip them. The LED lights sill use energy and they don't appear festive -- so they fail on both counts.

My compromise was to buy a solar-powered snowman at Canadian Tire. It's hard to get him aimed in the right direction, so as to avoid the street lights, but when he works, he's a thing of beauty!

i LOVE the LED lights, actually... i find them very beautiful and understated, unlike the other lights that looked all gaudy and burned your corneas out whenever they were used in massive numbers. theres a house around the corner from us with so many of those gaudy regular lights that i'm sure can be seen from orbit.

I gotta say there are colours of the LED that are just ick. I was handed some blue ones and I went "Blue?". I was politely told, "Yes, they looked nice and are the one CrappyTire has on their tree outside". (She does not say Crappy Tire, I do, she would never say that, she is a lady)
I tried to protest "But, blue?" Then she hummed Helen Reddy's I am Woman and said, "just put them up".
I would like to say I protested loudly and stood firm, but I am the peacemaker according to online personality tests. I put up the blue lights while mutterering, "%$#@^ Blue? &^%$#@#% Blue....^%$#@#% Blue!
I must say, but will forever deny it, the blue looks nice.

Yeah! Screw the environment! Who cares about the waste! Down with environmentally friendly unnecessary outdoor decorations!

I haven't seen those type of lights yet, but I say use bright lights! This is a time of year to celebrate light. Let all us average people light up our houses for our neighbours and neighbourhoods. Let's cut back on wasteful electricity use by passing a law banning McDonald's, CIBC and all those commercials ventures from using electricity for their advertising signs and pushing more and more and more commercialism into our consciousnesses. And they do it year round!

pog,

I like the LED lights and like StephenGordon I've got the blue ones.

Athough I call them my Advent lights.

They might stay up a little past advent but not much past.

I have a live tree in a pot that we decorate. It is getting a bit heavy lugging in and out of the house and I have to check the slope of the yard where I had the pot as it has a bit of a lean to it.

Hard to say if they are as good as the others particularly as we have no snow in southern, Ontario.

I did like handling them while they were on as I put them up. They give off no heat so no burns. They also take more of a beating than do the traditional lights which is nice because after a gusty evening who want's to pick shards of couloured glass out of the garden.

The most disconcerting thing about them is the optical effect they give off when you move them around while lit..

Grace and peace to you.

John

The LED lights are okay (and SG, if it makes you feel any better, I especially like the blue ones...both the dark purple-y kind and the lighter periwinkle kind) but on our spruce tree in the front yard we still have the large old-fashioned kind that look opaque. We also just got a lovely Moravian star light for the top of it...I always wondered why outdoor trees never seem to get a star and eventually tracked one down.

I find many of the lurid, brilliant lights and serious stupid inflatable crap from Walmart so hideously trite it makes me want to throw up! LED lights!!!! Yes!!!

LED lights are the way to go. I agree with you Mike , most of the Christmas lights I see look hideous and tacky. Is this the way to celebrate the birth of Jesus by lighting up the neighbourhood like Vegas?

I'm actually kind of hoping that as LED technology spreads, the other kind of bulb will become illegal. Starting with Christmas lights. Christmas lights are a HUGE waste of electricity. Thanks to LED lights, we get to have something in our windows for the first time ever!

I notice that all the lights (and just about everything else) is made in China. Sometimes I feel bad buying stuff from China. You hear about terrible human rights abuses there, and people dying like flies in coal mines, and dreadful polution. Sometimes when I use or look at something made in China, I wonder if anyone died in a coal mine because of producing this particular thing.
On the other hand , we are helping the economy of China by buying their stuff.

Oh dear--maybe this should have been a new topic.

China is the new economic power, Mely; they own the bulk of the U.S.'s international debt.
China is the future and I'm comfortable with that. They're ok folks and not quite as militarily trigger-happy as certasin other folks on the planet right now.

My son & daughter have decorated their tree with blue a& white LED lights - it looks beautiful. LOL I don't think it has so much to do with the environment but because it is the latest technology!! I still looks beautiful. However, it would cost a fortune to replace all of our lights so I am going to do a few at a time - when they get a little more advanced!

Not another set of lights that doesn't work,.. wait, that set doesn't match with this one, ah, no, what bulb will fit here, these things are hot, ...(yes, that was me, frustrated to no end earlier this week, with the light strings accumulated over time)...
finally, in a moment of clarity, i hopped in a car, ended up in CT's doors, and bought new sets of LED lights, which happened to be on sale.
Yes, they do make you remember the 70's, if you move them quickly.
Yes, they do have some "interesting" colours...(i personally think too many reds on this set)
But, they are cool to handle, have a guarantee, and ..take hardly any energy, oooh, adn they have plugs at either end (ok, that is a nice feature).
Does this have anythign to do with Christmas? probably not.
Is it a total waste of money which could go to better causes? Yes, I know
Is there soemthing special about sitting in the living room, reading, with the tree lit, and the carols on, that I would miss for the world? absolutely

Gee, and I was still using candles on the tree. no wonder
I've had so much trouble with the damn thing catching on
fire all the time.

Bah. Humbug.

;)

Actually, I got a great deal on the blue ones. The box says white, but they're blue. I'm getting used to them. And, at 2 watts per string, my wife doesn't mind that I have them spread all over the place.

Hey Mike
What are you drinking in that cup.
Firewater!

We just bought a pre-lit artificial tree a few years ago (so no LED's) and when we got it home, boy did it light up the room. I mean, it is so bright that I got a headache. Funny, it didn't look so bright in the store, next to all the other trees and lights. Now they have pre-lit LED trees, and I wish we'd held off another year or two. But... I just bought a tree-light dimmer (seems I'm not the only person with this problem :) at Home Hardware for $8 on sale. It has 4 levels - off, 30%, 60%, and 100%. I set it to 30% and it's very soft and subdued, just the way I like it, and it only uses 30% of the energy. (Okay, not LED equivalent, but better than a zillion lights at 100%). I don't know if you can get these kinds of things for outdoor lights, but if you can, it might be useful for people who are still in the process of switching to LED's, and don't mind a softer, gentler approach to Christmas decorating.

LEDs are the way to go. Alas, the growing pains toward a sustainable energy culture really have to start somewhere, so if you find the lights are too dim, live with it! Better yet, live without them, and enjoy the lights at city hall/town hall/some public facility.

Think about the fossil fuels burnt just for pretty twinkling lights for an entire neighbourhood. Our kids can do without, if it means they could avoid the rolling brown-outs the next time the energy grid is strained because of cranked up air conditioners during hot summers.

I have yet to really see leds in action except for the flashlight i go for xmas. But I can say this lights in general have become obsene. I find most lights garish, i like the idea of the subduded lighting of the leds seems classy.
Oh is it me or does yoondani look like a chinchilla, i thought a saw a squirrel earlier now that i think of it lol