Do You Know Where Your Decorations Are?

If your answer is outside, apparently, someone needs to give you this message: THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS ARE OVER!

Now that you've drunk your fill of eggnog and have long-since grown weary of every recorded version of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" playing nonstop on the airwaves from Thanksgiving until Christmas Day. . .

Now that you've sorted through the presents you received, creating three piles--the ones you keep and use, the ones you plan to re-gift throughout the year, and fruitcake. . .

Now that you've recovered from another New Year's hangover, be it food or champagne induced . . .

IT'S TIME TO TAKE DOWN THOSE ICICLE LIGHTS CLIPPED TO YOUR ROOF'S EDGE!

Yes, they MUST be removed and stored in your attic, basement, or garage. It's a law-Newton's Law, in fact. What goes up must come down. And you can't fight the law.

My demand, I mean advice, may not be included in any feng shui book you purchase in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble, and Oprah may not have included a similar entreaty in O Magazine, but I'm pretty sure she and Martha Stewart would agree with me. THOSE LIGHTS, BE THEY ICICLE, NET, WHITE OR MULTI-COLORED MUST REST TO SHINE ANOTHER YEAR.

Some of you may be wondering if there aren't neighborhood covenants ensuring that exterior Christmas lights be removed before Valentine's Day, which would render my friendly reminder unnecessary. For those of you fortunate enough to have lighting stipulations, the answer is yes; you can contact your homeowners' association and ask them to enforce the covenants. For those of you whose neighborhoods came into existence prior to the invention of the dreaded icicle light, which I have seen dangling from gutters well past the Fourth of July, the answer is no. We must find alternative means to convince our neighbors to comply with our wishes. Perhaps a brick, I mean a loaf, of fruitcake could seal the deal.

Yet, what if fruitcake bribery doesn't work? Well, I guess some of my fellow neighbors and I may be forced to de-foliate those houses ourselves, like the character Patty Campbell in the "Blinded by the Lights" chapter of A Day in Mossy Creek. Though quite sane, she was pushed over the edge by a man whose out-of-season sense of festive went beyond icicle lights and included failing to remove a faded wreath hanging over the toilet sitting in his front yard. I guess I can be thankful that Orville Gene Simple doesn't live in my neighborhood.

Don't blind me with your lights, take those decorations down!