Oh, Jingle Balls.

So you’ve already put your holiday decorations right? Our tree and the usual indoor lights went up on the day after Thanksgiving, the minute the turkey carcass hit the soup pot.

We don’t have a whole lot of lights - it’s just the ones on the tree and then two strands around the window. Those are to show the neighbors we’re putting in at least SOME effort for the holidays season. We have standard incandescent xmas lights. They’re the typical ones that always have one light busted forcing you to search through the entire strand to find the bulb that’s the culprit.

Even though it probably wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference for us, I’ve been wondering how much of an improvement in energy savings it would make to use LED Christmas lights. Yes, yes, I’m behind on the whole Light Emitting Diode trend. Our motto is: “If it ain’t broken, then don’t buy any similar crap at Target even if it’s on sale.” So we’ve had the same holiday lights for ten years now.

But anyhow, I was reading a few articles about the LED lights and it turns out that there are some big advantages. Duh. I think these would be magnified greatly if you put up a lot of lights for the holidays. We don’t have a lot of lights, but if our current ones ever give out, I’d consider them.

A summary of some advantages: Energy efficiency of about 10 to 1 over incandescents, which seems pretty tremendous. They also don’t put out as much heat, which some people say reduces fire risk (Mythbusters showed how to set a tree on fire with lights, but I think they had to use a whole lot of strands). They’re more durable and (supposedly) have a longer life, because they use plastic instead of glass and don’t have filaments. Finally, if you want brighter colors LEDs might be the way to go.

At this point, I’m surreptitiously pocketing the bribe money that evil LED manufacturers have paid me and walking out the door… Oh, wait. Before I go, there’s no catch(es), right? Ah, yes. I would guess that the initial cost would be one. LEDs lights are usually more expensive in general. Also, what do you do when an LED burns out? The answer, if they’re the non-socket type, is EAT THE COST. There’s no way to change those - and if they are socketed, then I’ve heard they can be susceptible to rust if they’re used outside. Also, I read somewhere that there is a noticeable “flickering” for some types of LED lights.

If you have any experience with the Xmas LEDs, I’d like to know. Because I’m thinking of syncing some outdoor lights to stupid music like this. Holy jeebus.

[Editor’s Note: Can you just imagine the Pokemon seizures that the neighbor across the street from the house would have if that video was at real speed and the lights ran all night long?]