Once upon a time, there lived a young bachelor. He was a highly esteemed agriculture teacher at a small high school. He was energetic, creative, exciting. He even decorated his country house for a Christmastime contest…and won!
Fast forward nearly 10 years, and this agriculture teacher is now a full time farmer and currently is arguing with his wife about whether or not exterior illumination is NECESSARY this year?
IS IT NECESSARY?
That is not even the question I posed (by the way, the teacher was Joe, and I’m the wife…duh). The question was simply whether or not he would be helping me (did I mention I am carrying his FOURTH child??) put up said exterior illumination, not whether there would even be any.
Sheesh.
However, like after any discussion Joe and I have, this discussion got me to consider my viewpoint from another angle. I started to reconsider whether or not Christmas lights are necessary this year. After all, Ed and Joyce-our lovely neighbors-,my parents, and a handful of drunks out for a joy ride are the only folks who truly travel our road. Why would they need to notice our Christmas spirit?
However, why wouldn’t they notice our Christmas spirit? Why shouldn’t we pretend that people would notice that we did a nice job making our Norman Rockwell-ish front porch look even more Norman Rockwell-ish? Why don’t I just do it myself?
Well, it’s raining currently, and the wind is about 30 MPH, so I’m not interested at the moment, but my point is this: farmers tend to view anything that is outdoor related, but not farm-related as unnecessary, even if we are celebrating the birth of Christ (note the guilt trip here…pack your bags, Farmer Joe!). Seriously, it has come to my attention that because farmers are outside all day and some times even into the night, working with animals, caring for sick calves, hauling grain to the elevator in the wee hours in order to beat the lines, some tend to believe that everything else should be taken care of by those at home, or not tended to at all.
I know this is not necessarily the case with every farmer, but in my world, my mom puts up the lights, my aunt has stood on the bed of the pick up truck to string her lights, and I will, tomorrow, haul out my greenery and lights and put up my own dang Christmas lights.
Until there’s some sort of competition in our “neighborhood,” or when a commodity can come out of greenery and twinkling lights, we will never be accused of making a bigger carbon footprint because of the excess electricity our fancy light display is using.
Merry Christmas.