THE FAITHFUL CONSUMER December 05

…connecting faith and the environment

This is the time of year when ordinary streets and houses turn into fairy-tale play lands. The holiday lights come out, and with them, cities and towns become places of wonderful enchantment. I enjoy the holiday light displays, yet they also cause me angst because I know behind each of those beautiful displays is a power plant—often coal-burning—that is working overtime to provide electricity to fuel these lights.

Then last year I heard about something that soothed my angst a bit—LED holiday lights. LED holiday lights are virtually unbreakable, last longer, and use much less energy than the traditional incandescent kind. In fact, they use only 1 to 10 percent of the electricity of traditional holiday lights.

Last year and this year the holiday tree in the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda is lit with LED holiday lights. The cities of Milwaukee and Fond du Lac have LED downtown light displays as well.

Although there is spotty retail availability of this product so far, it is possible to purchase LED lights. Some companies that carry them are: Bruce Company (they have a nice selection), Johannsen's Greenhouses, Reinders, and Menards (where Focus on Energy is offering a $5 rebate on LED lights.) You can also order LED holiday lights on-line at www.efi.org , www.brookstone.com or 1000Bulbs.com.

For any questions, go to the following link: http://www.energyideas.org/documents/factsheets/HolidayLighting.pdf

Or call Barbara Smith at the Wisconsin Division of Energy (608-266-7554 or 1-800-762-7077 toll-free.) I’ve worked with Barbara on energy issues in the past and she’s a great, practical resource.

Congregations can do fund-raisers, like the church in Illinois that offers LED outdoor home holiday decorating for a fee. Older parishioners like this because they don't have to climb around on the house in the ice and snow. Younger, nimbler folks on the church fund-raising committee put up the LED lights at the appropriate time, and take them down in January.n a completely different holiday note:

In one of my previous columns, I wrote about the tornados that hit Stoughton this last summer. Although the damage was huge (eighty homes were destroyed) there was only one casualty, that of a local man. He had gone downstairs with his family and when the tornado hit, the fireplace and chimney fell through the floor onto him below, killing him instantly.

I ran into his widow at the hardware store just a few days ago. I was there looking at wallpaper samples because a toilet had broken in our house and when the plumber came out and removed the toilet, he said that we not only needed to replace the toilet but also the floor, as water had seeped out through the years and rotted the wood underneath. I figured since we were replacing the toilet and floor, we might as well spring for some new wallpaper.

So when I ran into Peg at the hardware store, I was stressed and consumed with worry about the toilet, floor, money, the holiday season, you name it. She was choosing colors for the walls of her house that is being re-built by insurance. “Insurance is replacing my house,” she said, “but no one can replace my husband of 30 years.” She spoke of how weekends are the hardest; weekdays are taken up with work and chores, but weekends were the time she and her husband spent together and the time when she really misses him. She was amazingly brave and valiant—and sad. I asked if I could do anything; she said praying for her would be the most helpful.

After leaving the hardware store, I realized that all the stresses in my life right now are things that don't matter. The kids are all doing well, my husband and I still have each other (cliched, but true) and the toilet, floor, whatever, will all work out in the end. I had been given a reminder of how skewed my priorities were, of how little the little things matter.

December’s tip: Don’t stress the holidays. The cards to write, the presents to buy, the lack of money for those presents—none of it matters. What matters is that we are good to our loved ones and neighbors, that we have the light of life in our lives, and that we try to let that light shine.

Sarah Streed is a board member of the Wisconsin Interfaith Climate & Energy Campaign (WICEC) and runs Write Stuff Works (www.writestuffworks.com ) a writing business. She lives in Stoughton, Wisconsin with her husband and children. Email smstreed@sbcglobal.net

All rights reserved by Sarah Streed.

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