Holiday Decorating: Festive Family Fun or Toxic Tradition?

It’s the holiday season and besides pushing your way through the packed malls in a vain attempt at, not-so much purchasing a gift, but simply narrowing down your options—wives and girlfriends don’t give lists because “you should know what I want by now and if you don’t then you should’ve been listening”—you have other little tasks, namely decorating your house so the neighbors refrain from referring to you as Harry Humbug.

So you take to the basement to unravel the holiday lights that you so carelessly and lethargically balled up and stuffed in a box at the conclusion of last winter. After disentangling the rat’s nest of lights, you grab your rickety ladder, staple-gun, and morph into Clark W. Griswold for a few hours.

It is at this point that you enlist the help of little Sparky. Little Sparky stands at the base of the warped ladder and methodically feeds you line upon line of lights while you desperately cling to the top rung just trying to escape the whole ordeal without a serious injury.

And just like that, it’s over. You’re back on the couch, clicker-in-hand, sipping spiked eggnog and watching college football.

But is it really over?

An article in the Bloomberg News says think again. Jeff Plungi writes, “Fifty-four percent of holiday lights tested in a U.S. study have more lead than regulators permit in children’s products, with some strands containing more than 30 times those levels.”

Items made out of vinyl have been known to have high concentrations of lead in them. Holiday lights as well as bulbs are coated in vinyl causing anyone who touches them unnecessary exposure to the toxin.

Annual occurrences that were once was seen as nothing more than innocent family tradition, such as putting up the lights or decorating a Christmas tree, are now known to be hazardous.

Take these precautions:

1.)    Test your lights for lead before decorating your house or the tree

2.)    Use gloves.

3.)    Make sure little Sparky washes his hands before diving headfirst into his post-decorating cup of hot-chocolate.