{"id":553,"date":"2014-12-11T06:28:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T14:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=553"},"modified":"2014-12-11T06:28:41","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T14:28:41","slug":"christmas-light-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=553","title":{"rendered":"My Christmas Light Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Christmas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Jack Edwards<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Every year, I delay putting up the Christmas lights on the outside of my house, and every year, a very important person who will remain nameless (my wife) lovingly suggests that this may be due to my laziness. This is emphatically Not True. No one enjoys untangling lights in freezing temperatures and risking his life hanging from a shaky aluminum ladder more than I do, especially while important sporting events are playing in my warm living room. Yes, to the untrained eye, this may appear to be laziness, but it is actually my use of a carefully calculated, four-part formula to determine the precise date and time to enjoy this special holiday tradition.<\/p>\n

The time honored test to determine when to put down the remote control and march out into the elements to once again \u201ccelebrate\u201d this particular aspect of the \u201cMagic of Christmas\u201d is as follows:<\/p>\n

One. \u201cPreserve precious resources.\u201d I don\u2019t want to get too technical and start throwing around a lot of high tech mumbo-jumbo, so stop me if I start to lose you, but Christmas lights require copious amounts of \u201celectricity.\u201d And the production of electricity consumes vast quantities of precious resources, and by \u201cprecious resources,\u201d of course, I mean my money. The longer I wait, the more I am able to \u201csustain\u201d my resources.<\/p>\n

Two. \u201cPut others first.\u201d Remember, it\u2019s not all about you. It\u2019s not all about your needs. Be the first to step up and be an inspiration to others. Somewhere out in your neighborhood is a home that is not adorned with Christmas lights. In that home is a guy sitting in his Lazy Boy with a cold beverage and a bag of chips tuned into SportsCenter. Think about that<\/em> guy.\u00a0 How is he<\/em> going to feel when he sees you outside putting up your Christmas lights? Think about the pressure and needless stress you\u2019ll be inflicting on this poor soul. Every day you delay putting up your lights is a precious gift to this man. It\u2019s called the Golden Rule folks. Start obeying it!<\/p>\n

Three. \u201cCelebrate the sweet sound of your wife\u2019s voice.\u201d In the history of the universe, no guy has ever, not one single time, even considered putting up the Christmas lights without his wife telling him. The only exception to this is\u2026. Actually, there is no exception to this. And if you are like me, the sound of your wife\u2019s voice is like sweet nectar. You crave it even more than Sour Cream flavored Pringles. You simply can\u2019t get enough of it. If you also deeply love your wife, then you, like me, delay putting up the lights, not because you\u2019re lazy, but because you love your wife too much to do anything that will lessen the pleasure you receive hearing her remind you, again, and again, and AGAIN, to put up the ever-blasting Christmas lights already! This is referred to as the \u201cpleasure factor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four. \u201cLet the pie settle.\u201d God wants us to celebrate the true meaning of the holidays. That\u2019s why He created Black Friday. Nothing induces reflective thought more than storming over the top of less hardy shoppers who have fallen in our path as we rush forward in a blood-quest to save 35 percent on a high definition television. It\u2019s right there in the Bible. So, here\u2019s the rule: If there is still meat on the carcass of your Thanksgiving Day turkey, it\u2019s too early for Christmas lights.<\/p>\n

Taking all four factors carefully into account, and double checking my math, I was able to determine the optimum date to put up my Christmas lights within a one-day margin of error. That date is December 27th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Edwards \u00a0Every year, I delay putting up the Christmas lights on the outside of my house, and every year, a very important person who will remain nameless (my wife) lovingly suggests that this may be due to my laziness. This is emphatically Not True. No one enjoys untangling lights in freezing temperatures and […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[155,401,18,403,405,404,532,33,402],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-christmas","tag-christmas-lights","tag-funny","tag-holiday","tag-holiday-tradition","tag-holidays","tag-humor","tag-laugh","tag-precious-resources"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}