It's the Christmas light video again - 2025 edition

[00:00] As we swiftly approach the end of November...

[00:04] oh, as December draws so near, it's here,

[00:07] the holiday season is upon us.

[00:09] And, as is tradition, many people will be stringing colorful electric lights all every which way.

[00:16] Because why not?

[00:17] And, as is tradition,

[00:23] brought about by scientists

[00:27] they never stopped to think if they should.

[00:30] But before I launch into the tirade 

[00:35] here's an actual Christmas light storage tip I learned from a teacher in high school.

[00:41] When it comes time to put the Christmas lights away for the season,

[00:44] don't use the tried and true

[00:46] "wrap them around your arm like an extension cord and then shove it all into a Jewel bag" method my dad taught me

[00:51] because that's bad.

[00:53] Sorry, Dad, they just get way too tangled up and tend to break.

[00:57] Instead, take a rectangular piece of cardboard 

[01:05] Cut at least two slits with one on each 

[01:08] Then, and this is very important,

[01:10] start with the female end of a strand of

[01:17] Now, simply wrap the lights repeatedly around the cardboard until you're back to the male end, like so.

[01:26] [a very high-pitched rendition of Entry of the Gladiators]

[01:37] Okay,

[01:38] now you can either stick the male end 

[01:43] simply slide it into the other slot and you'll 

[01:48] with all your Christmas lights on them.

[01:51] If you do it this way, you will discover that they stack nicely into boxes while remaining completely tangle-free.

[01:59] And so long as you remember

[02:03] they function as a decent spool

[02:10] I am a full-on convert to this method 

[02:15] So there you go!

[02:15] And now back to my regularly scheduled tirade.

[02:19] You see, I am old enough to predate

[02:26] When I was a youngin', we were still mostly shoving electricity through tiny tungsten filaments

[02:31] which caused those filaments to get incredibly hot such that they glow with a bright white light.

[02:38] That's just how light bulbs worked.

[02:40] And since the underlying technology

[02:45] if we wanted to produce colored light, we'd need to use filters

[02:50] which removed certain

[02:55] This had two inevitable side effects:

[02:57] One, the filtering wasn't perfect,

[03:00] so the colors produced, while often quite

[03:07] It does not look, for lack of a better word, electronic.

[03:11] Secondly, this filtering from a wide

[03:17] reduces how much light escapes the bulb,

[03:20] causing those colored lights 

[03:25] particularly the cooler colors on the

[03:31] Now, I am fully familiar with that

[03:35] "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works."

[03:41] And while I'm sure there's some

[03:46] the part that follows about stuff which hit the scene in your teenage to early adult years being new and exciting

[03:53] only sort of applies to me.

[03:56] Because you see, while I absolutely love what the light emitting diode has done to make the world better,

[04:02] it has made Christmas much, much worse.

[04:06] Now, instead of decorating with

[04:10] we are decorating with horrid points of flickering

[04:20] And not even, like, a good one.

[04:22] Why is this?

[04:24] Well, because LEDs are actually only capable 

[04:30] This means they produce a single and very pure color.

[04:35] Now, when it comes to

[04:39] Every modern white LED you'll ever see is actually

[04:46] good old fluorescent lighting technology.

[04:49] The actual diodes produce blue (or as is increasingly common these days) a purplish near-UV light.

[04:56] So to fill in the rest of the spectrum,

[05:03] and converts the high frequency light

[05:08] which cluster together well enough

[05:15] We've gotten incredibly good at this.

[05:18] While cheap and nasty LEDs

[05:22] any decent LED fab these days is

[05:29] that produce light which is

[05:34] And of course, we're now able to embed

[05:40] that we can make

[05:45] This is all innovation I'm 100% on board with!

[05:49] And when people care, we can even do stuff like combine diodes of different color temperatures into a single product

[05:55] for producing a fixture or bulb

[05:59] Or, as is my favorite application,

[06:02] automatically shifting the color temperature

[06:07] to mimic the warming effect

[06:11] You can build that directly into a light bulb

[06:14] which means you can use old-fashioned

[06:19] and you don't even need an app!

[06:21] Philips used to shove that tech

[06:25] but not enough people seem to notice how good

[06:30] Even their own website filter doesn't work.

[06:33] You people need to start caring about lighting more than you do!

[06:37] I'll rant more about that later, but back to Christmas lights.

[06:41] While we have had the capability

[06:46] and while the market clearly understands that there are lots of people who want the energy efficiency and long life benefits of LEDs

[06:54] but who also want to have the aesthetics

[06:59] that memo just never gets received

[07:03] Because year after year they end up putting Christmas lights on the market which look like these old ones.

[07:09] Now, instead of taking a

[07:14] each light produces its own wavelength,

[07:19] but especially in the case of multicolored

[07:24] overly bright colors which overwhelm the rest 

[07:31] while admittedly a matter of taste,

[07:37] It's Christmastime, not the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

[07:43] Now, the really frustrating thing here

[07:48] Do what everyone already does with regular old light bulbs and make old-fashioned looking things using modern technology.

[07:58] Produce Christmas lights with warm white diodes

[08:03] like we used to have to do with incandescent lights.

[08:07] For years, I was making YouTube videos where I would buy cheap warm white LED sets of Christmas lights

[08:13] and color them by hand

[08:17] A) this could be done and

[08:22] I was never completely happy

[08:26] but this was just a silly thing I did every year to hopefully prove a point and inspire someone with an R&D budget to take action.

[08:34] And as many of you know, this is finally starting to happen.

[08:37] A few years ago, I learned about Tru-Tone bulbs, the passion project of a designer who had the exact same bugbear as me,

[08:45] but who actually bothered to do something about it.

[08:48] True Tone started out

[08:53] which actually looked

[08:57] And they are truly great products

[09:01] I love them.

[09:03] But they weren't making mini lights... yet,

[09:07] so I just kept making the same video year after year.

[09:11] Then last year, my friend Dan 

[09:15] and these were almost perfectly argeted at me specifically.

[09:19] This is my preferred color combo

[09:23] and they executed the idea much better than any of my experiments could.

[09:28] I did have a few nitpicks, but well...

[09:34] those have all been taken care of.

[09:35] This is a set of generation 2 Vintaglows,

[09:39] and they are a near spot-on perfect match

[09:46] Also of note, for those of you who would prefer the more 

[09:52] Now, I do want to point out that in a dozen sets of my Gen 1 Vintaglows, I did find one where a strand lost a section.

[10:00] I'm sure it's fixable, and each set included some spare bulbs,

[10:06] and I haven't gotten around to it right yet.

[10:08] I might do that for Connextras but it'll be a couple of weeks.

[10:11] But since so many of you know

[10:15] I tend to be alerted to the existence

[10:19] And this year there were

[10:23] This puts me in a bit of an odd spot because I very much want Tru-Tone and the Vintaglow line from Merry Co to succeed as businesses.

[10:32] But both of them are carving out a very specific niche

[10:36] and that makes their products relatively unattainable both from a cost perspective and simply where to get your hands on them.

[10:44] I've had correspondence with both founders now and have learned some very interesting things about the Christmas light industry.

[10:52] It's clear that the actual creative direction which is producing these better lights is coming from them.

[11:00] The biggest problem with Christmas lights today is that nobody at the big box stores who is in charge of ordering them for the year

[11:08] really cares that much and simply takes whatever options the overseas factories that barf them out present to them that year.

[11:17] But Tru-Tone and Merry Co are quite a lot more persnickety,

[11:21] so I want to make sure they get the credit for sparking much of what has happened and I'm sure will happen in the future.

[11:28] But I also get the sense that both of them will 

[11:32] if the broader Christmas light market gets a little less...

[11:39] So with that, let's look at this copycat.

[11:43] I was a little too late, as you might have been able to tell,

[11:48] pretty far away Target to get these and the only option

[11:55] But there now exists a Sylvania-branded

[12:01] pretty good!

[12:03] These appear to actually be made of glass,

[12:05] so this is pretty much the best way to create traditional looking mini-lights with LEDs rather than filaments.

[12:13] But the green...

[12:16] the green's not great.

[12:18] It's more like a jade or forest green

[12:24] Honestly though, that's really the only problematic color.

[12:28] This is not my favorite color combo,

[12:33] but it's a very standard one

[12:38] And it's a good sign that these are sold out already while there are plenty of other options still available in the store.

[12:45] So perhaps signals will get to the appropriate people 

[12:51] And speaking of sold out copycats, I was also alerted to this vintage option for sale at the Home Depot this year,

[12:58] which is, as far as I know,

[13:05] Now, this is as good a look as you're going to get.

[13:07] I would have absolutely bought a set to compare them,

[13:13] Which I will take as a very good sign.

[13:16] People know this looks better, 

[13:22] But while these are at least getting the concept correct, the quality of the color coating doesn't look that great.

[13:30] The blue is extremely faded.

[13:33] That might as well be a cool white.

[13:36] Now, it's possible that it was a darker blue

[13:41] but if the color was able to fade

[13:48] For comparison, this set of Tru-Tone Jewel Tone lights

[13:55] And now, a small diversion on nomenclature.

[13:59] Of course I checked out my mostly Midwestern mega merchandise mecca, Menards, to see what they might have in store.

[14:05] And I have one positive thing to say,

[14:11] I got excited by the packaging,

[14:13] which had been revised for 2025 and which was 

[14:18] but that was just pure lies.

[14:21] This is the same product I got my hands on last year, though I can't remember if there was a twinkling option or not.

[14:27] I checked the steady version and it had identical colors and their clear colored C7s and C9s are just as horrendous as before.

[14:34] So, whoever your supplier is isn't getting the memo.

[14:41] Or else you haven't figured out how to write that memo yet.

[14:44] So, what's my positive thing to say?

[14:47] Well, Menards is rolling out the term

[14:53] And I think they might have stumbled upon a great way to distinguish between monochromatic LED Christmas lights

[14:59] for you freaks which like that for some reason

[15:01] and the more pleasant vintage versions I'm yearning for.

[15:06] They need to actually get their vintage line

[15:12] But I think vivid versus vintage is a good distinction.

[15:16] Though I also think the "traditional glow" works well.

[15:21] I'm starting to think a big issue with modern lighting

[15:24] is that many people simply don't have

[15:31] So, while they can describe something

[15:36] it can be difficult to communicate the specific reasons.

[15:39] A simple distinction like

[15:44] And now, a second diversion on color combinations.

[15:48] For this video, I checked out a different

[15:53] Meijer.

[15:54] For those who aren't familiar with Meijer,

[15:58] it's essentially Walmart

[16:02] Now, they didn't have anything really notable except they are still selling incandescent twinkling light sets -

[16:09] branded as Phillips, oddly enough.

[16:12] my first Christmas light video was about these things and I love them a lot, so I was happy to see them for sale.

[16:18] And bought some, many more than two of them.

[16:22] But then I discovered that the

[16:27] were a color combo

[16:32] Red, yellow, green, blue, and purple -

[16:36] though you might call it magenta.

[16:39] This is the color combination of my grandparents' Christmas tree, and it hit me right in the nostalgia.

[16:46] And it also made me realize something.

[16:48] In the past, I have said I want none of those purples or pinks.

[16:53] But that's not strictly true.

[16:56] I am actually completely cool with there being a fifth color so long as it's distinct from the rest.

[17:03] That's why I don't like these sets with red, orange, and pink.

[17:08] Those three colors are simply too similar, and it means you end up with what blurs into an orangey red mess

[17:15] with scant pops of blue and green.

[17:18] This combo swaps orange

[17:23] And rather than a pink, which is simply a lighter red,

[17:30] So, it also stands out as a separate color.

[17:34] Here's a comparison between the more intense

[17:40] I realize most of what I'm doing here is rationalizing a subjective opinion,

[17:45] but I really do think it's important to have very

[17:52] I like the red, yellow, blue, green combo

[17:58] But the much more common red, orange, pink, blue, green has three warm colors which all just smear together.

[18:05] This five color combo with yellow rather

[18:10] manages to have five colors

[18:15] and so the addition of that purple doesn't bother me.

[18:18] In fact, I like it!

[18:21] And since the multicolored twinkling sets also have that combo,

[18:25] well, you know, I bought a bunch.

[18:27] I put them in my tree this year, though,

[18:34] There is a thin line between

[18:41] I'll see how my opinion changes

[18:45] So, there's really not a whole lot more to this video,

[18:51] If you're after the sorts of Christmas lights that I am,

[18:58] I know the folks at these companies are the reason the situation is starting to improve,

[19:04] and they're even more persnickety than I am.

[19:07] I've purchased products from both companies

[19:12] Links to their store pages are in the description,

[19:18] I'm not a very good Christmas lights influencer,

[19:21] but I am apparently enough of a Christmas lights influencer to get the inside scoop on some new products they have in the pipeline.

[19:30] However, once again, I'm in a bit of an awkward spot

[19:37] I like what both of them are doing,

[19:39] and since Merry Co focuses primarily on mini lights

[19:47] I feel like they complement each other quite well

[19:53] So, I will just say they both have some really cool new stuff coming which I am excited to see.

[20:00] And if you've been afflicted with Christmas light issues similar to mine,

[20:04] or perhaps even ones I don't have, such as a sensitivity to flicker,

[20:09] I think it would be worth signing up for their newsletters.

[20:12] They really are the epicenter of good nostalgic Christmas light innovation and are actually getting it done.

[20:19] So kudos to everyone at both companies.

[20:23] But I will take it as good news that other brands and stores are finally starting to get it.

[20:29] Slowly but surely.

[20:32] People genuinely want Christmas lights that look like this!

[20:36] But you have to make it clear that it's something special

[20:42] So many people have sent me hopeful things

[20:49] You can't just put the word vintage on the 

[20:54] People can see what's wrong with modern Christmas lights,

[21:01] If some actual effort is put into creating

[21:08] But it has to be real effort.

[21:11] These Sylvania lights are close,

[21:16] And their white strands, while solidly above average,

[21:22] This white is too pink and color rendering is poor.

[21:26] Vintaglow proved last year that you can source

[21:32] Genuinely, their clear mini lights are incredibly good and nearly indistinguishable from incandescent.

[21:38] But it takes a lot of work to keep overseas suppliers from cheapening out just a little too much...

[21:44] and the big box stores don't seem too inclined to do that work.

[21:48] And now I'm going to finish this video up

[21:51] with an unscripted section where I talk about some of my other LED-related complaints.

[21:56] I've written down a list of things to cover, and here we go:

[21:59] We'll start with a call back.

[22:02] "You people need to start

[22:05] I meant two things by that.

[22:08] First, we are now in a place where LEDs are so good and so efficient 

[22:13] (as well as cheap to operate)

[22:15] that overlighting your environment is very easy to do.

[22:20] One of the reasons I don't like modern

[22:27] No lights like this are very bright at all

[22:35] This is supposed to be in your line of sight.

[22:37] So, the thing you're looking at needs to be very dull.

[22:43] And a lot of modern Christmas

[22:48] I got caught off guard by someone who decorated way before Thanksgiving on my drive home and, geez,

[22:54] it was like they had a billboard in their front yard.

[22:56] That's not good!

[22:57] But it's not just Christmas lights.

[23:00] One thing that has also happened is I think LEDs have changed standards people have for lighting in a largely bad way.

[23:09] I've talked about this before when I 

[23:14] we are now very used to having central

[23:20] And that means a lot of people these days will look at more traditional lighting environments where you have things like

[23:26] table lamps and task lighting and

[23:33] Whereas what I think is really the case is

[23:40] I challenge you to figure out the difference between a single overhead saucer light and a bare light bulb hanging on a string.

[23:48] It's not actually that different.

[23:50] The saucer light is probably a little more aesthetically pleasing,

[23:53] but the pattern of light that it shines in the 

[24:00] And I think you would agree that's not good enough.

[24:04] But because LEDs are now so bright, you can have enough light to see in the room with a single point of light.

[24:11] And, uh, I honestly think people are

[24:17] It's really bad.

[24:18] One thing I've seen a lot of people complain about is hotel rooms because hotel rooms generally don't have overhead lighting -

[24:25] and they might have a light by the entrance

[24:30] I think that is actually a much more pleasant environment.

[24:33] But again, when you're used to having a single overhead light that illuminates the entire room from the center,

[24:40] oh well,

[24:41] then the room can look underlit.

[24:44] But I would challenge you to change your mindset to ask,

[24:47] "Well, what actually needs to be lit?"

[24:50] Here's a great example:

[24:51] I changed the light fixture above my dining room table to this.

[24:55] Not only because it's

[24:59] but these light fixtures only direct light down.

[25:03] The previous light fixture had the bulbs able to shine in all directions, which meant the room was very, very bright,

[25:11] but it also meant I was

[25:16] This fixture, by directing light only down

[25:22] There's almost no light

[25:26] That's the sort of stuff I would really encourage

[25:33] Lighting impacts your environment so much,

[25:36] but if all you want is enough light to see, you're probably going to end up with environments that are very harsh and very overlit.

[25:46] But continuing on that train of thought,

[25:48] there is a weird twist which I think has happened

[25:54] I no longer get that hung up on people who claim to prefer daylight balanced 

[25:59] I still say "claimed to" because of what I'm about to say -

[26:02] But I am increasingly convinced 

[26:08] (in some contexts - I'm not going to say you can't prefer it)

[26:11] but I'm increasingly convinced that a lot of that is

[26:18] like for example, you lived in a house which had a single boob light in the center with two 60W bulbs in there,

[26:25] then the only thing you have experienced with 

[26:33] and if you swap those warm lights 

[26:39] So I think something that has happened

[26:45] I don't want to say unawareness but poor awareness of the virtues of task lighting and directed lighting

[26:52] and having more sources of lighting

[26:56] and not recognizing that it's not the color temperature

[27:03] it's the fact that there isn't enough light in enough places.

[27:06] What I'm trying to say here is that

[27:13] but it has ended up changing our expectations

[27:18] One of the things that we still have is wattage equivalents.

[27:22] We still look at light bulbs and say

[27:26] And that's because it was, in the incandescent days, a fairly consistent amount of light output per watt.

[27:34] And now that LEDs have broken way beyond that level of brightness,

[27:39] I think it's just quite easy for us to expect 

[27:45] rather than expecting more lights spread out to have a more pleasant environment which is more evenly lit.

[27:53] I'll just put it like that.

[27:54] How am I doing for an unscripted section?

[27:56] I'll tell you, I don't think I'm doing pretty great because my next thing is a thing I already talked about.

[28:00] But to reiterate I guess

[28:03] I really feel like people these days 

[28:08] like using additional lamps or directional light.

[28:12] And this has resulted in a lot of overlit environments,

[28:20] One example, there's a house that I drove by that was built in the last couple years and they've got some exterior eaves lighting,

[28:27] like uh basically can lights in the eaves and my god,

[28:32] they are just way too bright!

[28:34] There's way too much light being fired 

[28:39] It does not look good.

[28:41] But I really think more and more people are just expecting cannons of light now that the LED can do that for us.

[28:50] But maybe we shouldn't.

[28:52] And for another great example of

[28:56] if you haven't already run across these, there are now really convincing LED alternatives to neon tubes.

[29:03] And I'm talking like traditional

[29:07] I'm a little sad for what that's doing to the neon industry,

[29:09] but it's a lot easier to work with

[29:15] However, so many of these products, while they look great,

[29:18] are way too bright!

[29:21] It's as if nobody who makes them

[29:26] And the trouble with making it brighter is that, especially when you think of something like a neon sign,

[29:31] the contrast is against a dark background, the night sky.

[29:36] And if you have something with an ornate shape

[29:44] There's a lot of new Christmas decorations that are coming out that have that sort of LED neon look to 

[29:50] And the thing is, they're so freaking bright that if you have them outside, you're never going to be able to tell what that is.

[29:57] Like, uh, I've seen a Santa head, which is just going to look like a red and white blob from any reasonable difference*

[30:03] They only look correctly 

[30:09] So, this is what I mean about the LED is great 

[30:14] in really small spaces,

[30:18] And I wish more people were thinking about that as a possibility.

[30:23] And for my last LED hot take,

[30:25] this is something that is more vibes based than anything else,

[30:30] I truly believe that when you have too much

[30:36] One of the things that the LED is letting us do now

[30:39] is create these incredibly interesting light fixtures and whole new kinds of light fixtures which are very cool.

[30:45] But when you have that completely unlimited freedom,

[30:49] sometimes you end up making

[30:53] Whereas on the other hand, when we used to have to design around standardized light bulbs,

[30:59] that led to a lot of really interesting creations.

[31:02] And so in a sense, I am truly bummed by what the LED has done because it's now so cheap, so easy, and so reliable

[31:11] (for the most part)

[31:12] that we have made some really visually interesting things that just don't actually work that well as light fixtures.

[31:22] And uh I've had this thing going on where I feel like a lot of sectors of the economy and industries etc.

[31:29] are losing their sense of purpose.

[31:32] And I think that the LED is a great example of that where now that we have brighter, faster, cheaper, stronger,

[31:38] we just do that rather than thinking about what would actually be a really good application for this technology.

[31:44] And thus explains why it's taken 10 years for 

[31:56] Yeah.

[31:57] Okay. Well, that's the end.

[32:00] I didn't write anything for the outro either,

[32:02] so hopefully uh the music is fading pretty well.

[32:05] I think we're going to do that jazzy

[32:10] And I guess the only thing left to do is to cut the black.

[32:13] ♫ a jazz version of We Wish You a Merry Christmas ♫

[32:19] just like I promised!

[32:20] ...and string it - shove it more appropriately.

[32:24] [laughs]

[32:26] ...better, so long as you remember to start wrapping at the female end,

[32:31] then they become a nice and functional spool...

[32:35] And you'll notice on this one, 

[32:40] [angry sigh] Or did I?

[32:43] No, I did. I just got tangled up.

[32:45] Wait, did I?

[32:48] No, I did not. Darn it.

[32:50] Here, watch watch me do it again because last year me made a boo boo.

[32:58] Which is why I am being very...

[33:02] ...I did - I did this on several of these and that is why I am making sure I point out start with the female end

[33:09] or you will regret it.

[33:11] They glow with a bright white light.

[33:16] That doesn't work

[33:17] [laughs]

[33:18] which caused those filaments to get so incredibly hot they glew with a bright white light.

[33:25] Glew? Heh.

[33:28] So here's a fun fact:

[33:31] I wrote this end-of-video captions gag in the middle of Kansas.

[33:34] Just passed a billboard

[33:38] This isn't what you were expecting for an end-of-video captions gag, huh?

[33:42] Well, me neither.

[33:44] Merry Christmas!