I’ve noticed something in my neighborhood and other areas of town in the past week that I’ve never seen before. Today is November 16th, and there are Christmas decorations already up. Not just a house or two, but several houses.
One of my neighbors has a blow-up Santa complete with reindeer and a sleigh up in their yard. Another already has a bunch of lights up. Looking out my backyard window, I can see the neighborhood behind me has a few houses with decorations and lights already up.
On a Zoom call the other day, one of the people in the meeting had a lit up Christmas tree directly behind her. I’ve also seen friends on Instagram and Facebook posting their holiday decorations. One of my good buddies said he would have put up his decorations early too, but his wife won’t let him until after Thanksgiving.
I asked my wife if she’s noticed decorations being up early this year. She said for sure, and wondered aloud if we should do the same.
After a few minutes passed, I asked her in a delayed thought why she thinks decorations are up so early this year. Is it because of the pandemic I wondered aloud. She thinks it’s because people are trying to find joy any way they can. I think she’s right.
Every December, holiday lights and decorations bring people joy. In a year where life has been so different, why not start that joy a little earlier? If putting up Christmas lights a couple weeks early helps to spread joy and happiness, I’m glad to see people are doing it.
Watching people find joy early this year led me to think more about the relationship between joy and money. There’s a famous saying that money can’t buy happiness, and I believe that’s true. An unhappy person can’t just frivolously spend and expect to find happiness an hour later.
For me, the relationship between joy and money comes down to value-based spending. Value-based spending is the process of assessing your values and deciding what’s important enough in your life to spend money on.
When you take the time to think about what is important, you get clarity. Not just clarity with money, but more importantly, clarity in other areas of life. That clarity then allows you to make decisions that align with your values. It helps to weed out all the unimportant things and leave the good stuff. The process itself can even be a joyful experience.
I think the Christmas lights and decorations pass the test for a lot of people. The decorations don’t cost a lot to buy and you can keep them for years. They’re also pretty easy to put up and take down unless you’re putting up lights like the movie Christmas Vacation. The biggest cost involved will be in the increased electricity bill, but even that’s fairly minimal as long as you’re not keeping them on all night.
The return people get from their efforts and money are high. I’m sure people put up lights for many different reasons. Maybe they like the way the lights look. Or the way the neighborhood feels different. Maybe it reminds people of holidays past spent with parents, grandparents, siblings, or their own children.
I fondly remember putting up lights as a little kid, trying to get the outside of the house to new levels of brightness. The day would start with untangling the Christmas lights, then testing them to make sure they worked before putting them up. Inevitably there’d be a couple broken lights that would have to be replaced. Some years we had the spare lights, in other years that meant a trip to the hardware store to get more.
Every year I’d push my parents to add on a few more lights or decorations, just to make the house a little bit brighter. Full disclosure, I was also a really competitive kid and may or may not have wanted to have the brightest lights in the neighborhood…
Whether it’s in putting up holiday lights early, or something entirely different, it’s important to find joy in our lives. There are countless ways to find joy, and the good news is that they are available now. And many are free or don’t cost much money at all.
There are so many articles out there that talk about retirement and “the future.” How to get there, how great life will be once you get there, how you’ll be able to do all the things you’ve ever wanted to do. While I think it’s extremely important to invest for the future and retirement, it’s equally important to find joy now.
There are numerous ways to find joy today, you just have to find them. A bike ride around the neighborhood with your kids, a family dinner at home, a walk around the local park, or going for a swim at the local lake don’t cost much, if anything. Joy can be found in everyday activities—today.
What brings you joy?
