In later life, Jesus Christ called himself the Light of The World. At the time he couldn't have known, except of course for Godly Omniscience, that his birthday would be the excuse to light up the world. Yet travel round the UK and you can see growing evidence of what has been dubbed 'housebling'. The phrase describes one of today's popular Christmas pastimes - lighting up the outside of your house with thousands of electric light bulbs in extravagant displays. Competitive instinct being what it is, the displays have reached new heights of shameless conspicuous energy consumption every year. Some people are said to spend £50,000 on beating the Edisons down the road with displays that can have up to 25,000 individual bulbs.
 | | Christmas lights have hidden costs |
A certain pricking of the environmental conscience is creeping in. After all, we have recently been urged to make sure our TV sets and digital set top boxes are switched off overnight, not kept on standby, so that excess energy consumption can be reduced and the planet can be saved a few days earlier. Yet one suburban display can burn enough energy in one evening to keep a medium sized city's TV sets happily warm and ready to serve at night for at least a week. If each of the bulbs on a big display was rated at 40 watts, then burning 25,000 of them for an hour would consume 1000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Running such a display for just over two hours a night means a whole metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each night. Assuming the bling Christmas lasts for around 25 nights, then just one house would be responsible for releasing 25 metric tons of CO2 to help along global warming. One can only fear for the electricity bill.
 | | Are the days numbered for extravagance? |
Now some estimates put the number of houses in the UK alone participating in a bling Christmas at five million a year. This is where the calculation could get seriously out of hand, let alone the effect on the atmosphere. However, we should get the situation in proportion. Most displays are relatively small and because of that environmental conscience many of them are changing from traditional bulbs to LED lights, which use about one-tenth of the power. Neither should we forget the pleasure given to millions of passers-by and children from some highly inventive displays that often raise money for local charities. But there's no doubt that Christmas bling is having a growing effect on our environment. Not only are these exuberant householders helping to churn out greenhouse gases, they are also adding to the growing light pollution in our cities. If the trend keeps proliferating it might even be impossible one day for three latter-day Kings to see that vital star in the East. Then where would Christmas be? Unless, of course, one of them gets a sat nav in his stocking. | 
