S/O of trees - have you put up any Christmas lights outside?

I'm in MA and I've already seen houses decorated for Christmas. This past weekend was record warmth (I had the AC on!) so I'm wondering how many people did their lights because you never know when the weather will change.

We pay to have ours put up and this year they hung them on the afternoon of Halloween. They put the lights on an automatic timer and they came on just as we were slammed w/ Trick or Treaters. My husband and I were running around trying to find the timer so we could turn the Christmas lights off, but they had put the timer in a different location this year and it took us awhile to find it.

We felt ridiculous having our Christmas lights turned on while kids were trick or treating. We finally found where they had put the timer and were able to disconnect the lights. We'll turn them back on the night after Thanksgiving.

We leave our outdoor lights up all year round. We have a high peak and neither one of us likes going up on that ladder, so they stay up. Thankfully the last sets lasted a number of years (maybe 5?) with minimal partial outages. When the roofers pulled them down this summer we figured it was time to switch them out. The new sets that go along the roofline are programmable so you can set them with different colors or combinations for different holidays or seasons. We also put out some of the red and green star shower type lights that shine onto the house. We don’t have those out yet but need to before the ground freezes solid and we can’t get the stakes in. Our other lights are inside the front windows (multicolor) and those stay up year round too but we don’t plug them in until after Thanksgiving.

DH likes the air blown decoration things but we don’t have a lot for Christmas because the really cool big ones are expensive. I like more traditional things like pine garlands but those are a PITA to put up and take down, plus they get so dirty and I can’t think of a good way to clean them. I always buy a real wreath for the front door when Costco puts them out.

I just bought an air blown turkey for Thanksgiving but it was too windy yesterday to put him out.

I'm still packing up Halloween, so no.

When I lived on a street that had traffic that could see lights, I set up the entire house! But now our home can not been seen well from the road, so it seems a waste of time to do lights outside. But the inside I go bonkers! I love Christmas, and put up indoor lights everywhere. I love the soft glow in the evening. I also do two trees, one with just angels. Covid year, DS put up a tree in the room that was his classroom, so we had 3 trees up that year.

We always do lights the weekend after Thanksgiving. I did see one house in our neighborhood that already had their lights up. I thought it was way too early! But, we don't tend to have extreme weather to deal with.

I never even got around to taking down the lights after Christmas last year--just too busy with grad school. LOL. I should at least turn them on to see if they still work and if any bulbs need to be changed.

Normally I do it over Thanksgiving weekend then wait til Dec. 1st to turn them on.

Merilee