As the holiday season will soon be getting underway, albeit, it seems, earlier and earlier each year, many people will be hoofing it up into the loft only to descend an hour later with boxes and boxes of good old Christmas lights.

Now I love a good Christmas sparkle, the same as any girl, but the fad for putting up more and more lights grows each year and it is difficult to see where it will end. Some of the ones in my street already take up half of Energy click here and it seems to me that any malfunction with any of my neighbours displays will wipe out half of the national grid.

I did it for a couple of years when my son was small; and yes there is something magical about hanging out nets and nets of crystal clear lights to make a real Winter Wonderland. Magical but time consuming. And I am sure that it actually makes Christmas go faster as in no time at all I was back up that ladder taking them down again.

But in these times of economic hardship and environmental issues that we live in can we really justify doing it any longer?

I am strangely attracted to looking at them (and yes there are some really garish ones out there..) and yet cannot help feeling repelled at the amount of energy they consume.