Top Stories of 2011: Christmas Light Fight

The second most-read story of 2011 here at DoylestownPatch didn't just attract tens of thousands of readers.

It also spurred more than 15,000 votes in our poll, a huge showing for a seemingly small story.

But to many, the news that outside the homes wasn't a small story at all. It was about the much larger themes of freedom of choice and what some saw as a politically correct assault on Christmas itself. Oh, and it was about homeowners' associations and their rules, which is always a good topic for a fight.

We polled readers on whether they supported a white-only exterior lights rule, like the one at Doylestown Station, or whether residents should be allowed to decorate for the holiday as they pleased, homeowners' association or no.

The results, and the comments, were overwhelming.

Of the 15,470 respondents, 314 sided with the white-only rule. Many weren't so much supporting the rule itself but the idea that homeowners' associations set out rules and residents should follow them.

"While I think all the rules are dumb, and people should certainly put the lights they want up, if you have a problem with rules, don't buy a home with a HOA, then cry about it later," wrote one woman.

The vast majority of votes, though - 15,156 - supported changing the rules to allow residents to decorate as they pleased.

"They can tell me how to decorate when they pay my mortgage and taxes," wrote one woman. "Until then, mind your own business."

Barbara Barba-Gamel lived in Doylestown Station and served on the homeowners' association board. She wrote that she loved the look of the white lights but believed people should be allowed to decorate with colored, too, pointing to Peddler's Village as an example of colored lights done right.

"I think that the board's concern was, that by allowing colored lights, it would lead to having blinking lights and inflatables," Barba-Gamel wrote. "Unfortunately, severe rigidity on the board's part has led to the situation that we have now with white lights vs. colored lights."

Of course, lurking underneath this whole debate is the premise that white lights are more tasteful, and sophisticated, while colored lights are, well, not.

To that end, Nancy Frazier, of Doylestown, wrote, presumably tongue-in-cheek, "Someone should let the Macy's in Center City know that their light display is tacky."

Michael Smerconish, the national pundit who grew up in Doylestown, philosophized that the debate is "emblematic of the American dream."

"You grow up in a colored-light household where your parents work their tails off to get you an education," Smerconish wrote in his column for The Philadelphia Inquirer. "That education enables you to obtain a job that pays more than your parents earned. As a result, you live in a nicer house than the one in which you were raised, and shuttle your own kids in a more luxurious car than you were driven in as a child. Along the way, you decide that you are no longer a colored-light person. No, you have arrived. You are a white-light person!

"Petite. Non-offensive. Uniform. White lights are decorations of power and prestige, suburban panache and urban glamour.

"Of course, they're also boring.

And sedate.

Pretentious.

Ah, heck, white lights are for posers and fakers. White lights are un-Christmas."

Read the rest of his column to see what he asked readers to do.

Next year, will we see more Doylestown-area homes decorated with colored lights?

Who knows. Stay tuned.