Christmas lights. There, I said it. Not exactly an easy thing for me to say, let alone think about, during the first week of November when even my local CVS hasn’t yet begun piping in Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” on a torturous loop but, hell, I said it and I’ll say it again: Christmas lights.

 

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, some Christmas light-related news of note: As they’ve done for the past four years, The Home Depot has launched a special Christmas light trade-in event that gives energy-conscious holiday decorators a chance to finally retire their arsenal of electricity-guzzling, potentially fire hazard-y incandescent light strings (working or non-working, it doesn't matter) for coupons good for up to $5 off on certain LED holiday lights. The retired incandescent light strings are then shipped off to a zero-landfill recycling partner where they’ll be broken down by their component parts and used to create new products. Check out the video embedded below to see what happens to them.

 

Each incandescent Christmas light string surrendered to your local Home Depot store is worth a single coupon (limit five per customer … and that means you, Michele Bachmann) so if you’ve got a tangled mass of old Christmas lights waiting to be resurrected for the holidays, get on it a bit early this year as this special 10-day promotion ends on Nov. 13.

 

I know, I know ... if you’re anything like me, it’s way too early to deal with Christmas anything (I'm still recovering from this LED Halloween display) but in addition to the coupon incentive that offsets the higher upfront cost of LEDs, remember that they last up to 10 times longer and are 80 percent more efficient than those of the incandescent variety. Plus, as mentioned, they’re a lot less likely to set your Douglas Fir ablaze. And as reported by my fellow MNN'ers Robin Shreeves and Siel Ju last year, The Home Depot isn't the only retailer that's in the tradition of offering discounts for incandescent-LED swappage.

 

So as painful as it may be, dig out and pack up those old incandescent holiday lights and get yourself to your local Home Depot over the next few days. The next step? Go home, stash away your new energy-saving lights, and don’t think about them again until approximately Dec. 15. 

 

More info on the trade-in can be found here. Have you already swapped your incandescent Christmas lights out for LEDs?