What kind of outdoor Christmas lights do you love or hate? [View All]

I can't stand icicles for several reasons. They're way too common; they take no creativeness to hang them; they're kind of stupid looking; and sometimes people leave them hanging from their eaves year round and they look messy in the summer. My wife disagrees with me. She doesn't think icicles are all that bad.

I'm also not a big fan of those corny looking huge inflatable Santas or Frosties, although I'm sure the kids must get a kick out of them. Some yards have about a dozen of those monsters all lit up and swaying in their yards. I suppose they are cheerful, though.

Lit-up wire reindeer frames don't do it either. They are really beat.

Then you've got the people who you can tell ran around all summer buying thousands of lights at garage sales. They've got them covering every square inch of their house and thrown over every little thing in their yard in a haphazard manner. I saw one yard last December where the guy had not only his entire house lit up worse than Chevy Chase, but he had everything else outlined in lights: the fence, the clothesline, one of those bathtub mangers, a couple old rusting car wrecks in his yard, an old fridge, and even his son's tree house in the back yard. A couple of his neighbors were pretty bad, too. Must be a status symbol or something.

I used to like those nets filled with lights perfectly spaced a few inches apart, those ones you drape over the shrubs, but anymore those look too commercialized and easy.

I can't stand any ones that blink on and off. I saw some icicles tonight that were blinking from one side of this guy's porch to the other and man was it gross.

I guess I like the ones that are simply hung on shrubs or trees and laid out by hand pretty evenly. I like it best when one color is pretty much used, with blue being my favorite, followed by white. I also like when someone has a single tree lit up way off in a field, sitting all by itself in the middle of nowhere.

My favorite house is this one where this guy has a pond, and around it he's got about 40 live spruce trees all decorated in blue lights, spirally wrapped around each tree. The pond is situated on a wide sweeping curve in the country and as you drive around the curve, it looks like the trees are slowly moving around the pond like its a big carousel in motion. Absolutely beautiful.

(Disclaimer: I think all homeowners who put up outdoor lights deserve credit for displaying their holiday spirit, even the ones who I think are tacky about it!)