It’s January 3rd and my neighbor still has a gajillion (I counted) Christmas lights up in her front yard. It’s lit up like a stadium over there.

I like them, but I was taught that it’s white trashy to keep your Christmas lights on after New Year’s Day. You can leave them up all year round if you want (but that’s technically white trashy too), but if you turn them on Before Thanksgiving or After New Years, then, as Jeff Foxworthy says, “You might be a redneck.”

On the way home from the movie tonight (I saw, “We Bought a Zoo!” which was wonderful if you happen to like heart warming, feel good types ofd movies – I know this is not everyone’s cup of tea. Don’t get me started about blood and guts in movies. Why? Because I’m already off track with tonight’s subject and surely you don’t want me going even further afield? I didn’t think so).

On the way home from the aforementioned movie, I observed that about every fifth house still had their Christmas lights on. That equates to roughly 20% of the population in Portland, OR being trashy. I’m not sure how to compare this to the rest of the country, what I know about that is skewed because I don’t watch much TV, and the shows my husband has on are things like “Swamp People” and “Pawn Stars.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with people making an honest living navigating swamps with the necessity of subtitles on the screen because you can’t understand their tooth-impaired conversations, or trying to hock their treasures while the TV bleeps more than the Roadrunner because the patrons and pawn shop owners conduct their business via obscenities, but can you imagine the Rockerfellers or Kennedy’s engaged in these activities? I can just see one of these high-brows showing up amongst the assorted scraggly-haired, cuss word slingin’, rifle-totin’ “stars” of one of those shows.

“Oh, sorry there Mr. Rocketfeller, sir, but you jist stepped in a pile a gator shit right there.”

“Oh drat the luck, I will have to have my valet, James, sanitize my Oxfords when we get back to our hotel suite.”

Judging from what’s on my TV, about 98% of the US population is white trash, and the other 2% is merely foul-mouthed, with beeps making up a good 70% of the dialogue. I bet they all still have their Christmas lights up.

Well, that is enough facts and figures for one evening. I have beat this dead horse senseless, and so I will ride him off into the sunset, where my path will be illuminated with the warmth of Christmas lights looking like Santa’s runway all up and down the January streets.