Does this piss anyone else off, or is it just me?

It's that time of year again.

The temperature has dropped. The snow has started to fall. Christmas Carols can be heard twenty four hours a day on 94.3 The Bridge. And my neighbors have started putting up their Christmas lights.

Now, before I start this nice little rant let me say this, I like Christmas. I like Santa. I'm even cool with Jesus (regardless of the fact that he is NOT the reason for the season). I like hot apple cider, and Christmas cookies. I swear I'm not about to start a Jihad against Christmas.

However, I'm not okay with the sickness that seems to overcome people in this country around the holidays which allows them to blatantly disregard the energy crisis we are currently facing.

The United States of America makes up for 20% of the energy consumed in the entire world. That would be okay if we supported 20% of the world population or even if we were consuming energy mainly from a renewable source, but neither condition is accurate. We only support 5% of the world population, and our main energy resources continue to be refined fossil fuels.

I swear I must be the only one who throws up a little in my mouth when I see the Smith's over there setting up three six ft tall blow-up characters, a light up nativity set, Santa and all the reindeer on their roof, and about 912,670 lights.

Not only are these displays grotesque, but these people actually make money off their gluttony! There are bus tours for citizens who want to view their houses and make donations to their energy bills!

I know most of the people in this country are mindless wasting machines who have been systematically conditioned to not give a shit about how much they consume (this goes for food and manufactured goods as well), but it really comes out full force around the holidays.

Countless Christmas parties where we are invited to stuff ourselves so full we have to unbutton our pants a little under the table. Christmas morning arrives and where little boys and girls used to receive one or two presents from Santa, they now carelessly unwrap one toy and throw it aside to unwrap the next, not even taking the time to fully appreciate what the first toy was before discarding it. And lets not forget those lights, doesn't this bother anyone else?

Just so we're clear, I'm talking about this:

This is bad, if your house looks like this: seek help. 

Not this:

This is okay, it looks very nice. Good work. 

So, one more time. This:

No good

Not this:

Very good, tasteful.

Some lights are fine, they look nice, they are very Christmas spirit-y. I have three strands myself, and when I have my own house I'm sure I'll have more. I'm talking about the ones that are outrageous, the houses where you know they are spending hundreds of dollars on electricity for their Christmas decorations alone. It's wrong, it's selfish, it's wasteful, most of the time it's downright ugly, but mainly it's completely unnecessary. I promise your neighbors aren't going to think less of you if you don't plaster your house with the usual 300 ugly, light-up, blow-up, confetti filled decorations this year. In fact they'll probably thank you if you don't, since now they can fall asleep at night without drawing the black out curtains.