I know what you’re doing, and I sympathize, but it won’t work.

January can be a dreary, dismal time. The days are shorter, the weather is hostile to human life, and there aren’t any major holidays to speak of, so people can’t socially shame each other into pretending to be cheerful. So I can understand the temptation to hold on to the last big holiday until the next one comes, or until spring, whichever comes first.

(Also, trying to extend Christmas is probably healthier than a months-long New Years’ Eve champagne bender.)

The trouble is that people aren’t still celebrating Christmas. The holiday dinners and holiday travel are done with, and the presents are all open. All you’re doing is extending the artificial and increasingly strained pose of good cheer and hoping it’ll be enough.

It’s entirely up to you whether you turn the lights off, of course, but I thought you should know that even if the pretense isn’t obvious to you yet, it’s obvious to us.

Exceptions:

Anyone with blue lights up can keep them on year round. I, for one, want to know who the power-worshipers are.

And to the one family with their purple Halloween lights still on… I give up.