November 19th, 2009 · No Comments

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Remember Chevy Chase’s escapades with a ladder and those strings of outdoor lights in Christmas Vacation? Apparently many Americans would have been happy to help him kick that plastic Santa to death.

A new survey commissioned by GE of 1,050 Americans found that dealing with those tangled, twisty lights appears to be one of the Christmas season’s biggest hassles.

Of the people who plan to decorate with lights (870), a majority (56 percent) cited untangling last year’s lights as the season’s “biggest hassle”.  Others noted that stringing lights on the house or in the yard (47 percent) and stringing lights on the tree (39 percent) as the season’s biggest non-joyous headache.

And the bah-humbug didn’t end there. Others said they didn’t much care for hanging ornaments and decorations (23 percent) or getting the tree to stand up in the stand (19 percent).

Spiked eggnog anyone?

Moving on to less edgy topics, the survey by Goodmind Market Research found that 24 percent of the respondents planned on decorating with LED lights this season. This led GE Consumer & Industrial, engineer of the survey, to conclude that a pre-lit LED Christmas tree could be the “hit of the season.”

Perhaps that would be about the perfect combination of convenience and energy-savings for economically stressed, celebration-weary Americans.

And surprise! A GE licensee, Santa’s Best Craft Ltd., happens to sell pre–lit trees with low voltage, cool burning GE brand Energy Smart® LED holiday light sets that use about 80 percent less energy than traditional holiday lighting. (Available in scads of stores across the country.)

Of course, the verdict’s still out on whether artificial really is greener than using a live tree that’s been chopped down at a tree farm. Some worry that all those plastic trees end up in landfills. At the same time, others (except for Christmas tree farmers) say those cut trees are a big carbon waste. This perennial argument would be an excellent debate topic for while you’re untwisting those strings of lights.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media