Lileks: When holiday lights talk back to you

Just so we're clear: If you take the lights down before I do, you're a holiday kill-joy. If you take them down later, you're lazy.

Yes, it's that sad time in the bleak midwinter when the neighborhoods go dark, one house at a time, as people realize a fortnight has passed since they left the tree on the boulevard like a mob hit dumped from a car.

Yet the lights blaze away. What signs do we give when we keep them on?

Middle of January: Can't let go of the joys of the season, the comforting glow of the lights blaring away in the black sepulchre of the vast empty night; also shiftless.

End of January: Spouse still buys the excuse that it'll help the pizza delivery guy find us.

Middle of February: In Mexico; burglars, take a number and get in line.

March: Police account includes the phrase "mummified remains."

So I say the middle of January. On the 15th I yanked the cord, looking up and down the block to note that I wasn't the first, but not the last. The sun slid down with that strange, quick, guilty exit it has in the winter, like a parent leaving a recital after his kid has played, and all was black.

Except that the next morning the lights were on. I checked the switchbox: on. I turned it off and thought no more of it, until I passed the front windows later and saw that you could read fine print on a contract from 20 feet away by the glare outside the house. Turned them off again. Asked my wife: Did you turn the lights back on?

She was deep in work e-mail, but finally gave me a look as if I'd asked if she had any opinion on ending the Mali crisis diplomatically. What? No. Why? No reason.

The third night I kept them on. They were still burning in the a.m. Conclusion: electrical gremlins for the power company; neighbors who don't want to look like the last ones to go dark; wife secretly turning them on again because she thinks it's too soon to go dark.

Not saying which I believe, but I'm tempted to turn them off, then hide in the bushes, catch her in the act, then jump up and shout AH-HA! So you DO have an opinion on Mali!