Kelda, these pictures are not average at all! These are extreme, even by American standards.
I agree Clarissa, those are a bit extreme. But you never saw my house when I was a teen. I went ALL out. I hung large ceramic Christmas lights on all of the eaves and gables of the house, even in the back! Then I used those miniature twinkle lights and decorated all the bushes (roughly 12 of them) in the front yard and the hedges up against the house. I also bordered every window with miniature lights and I placed a 3 candle candelabra with orange bulbs in each of the windows. The deck railing was wrapped in miniature lights, as was the mailbox and the lamp pole next to the driveway. I bordered the driveway and the walkway to the front door with lights and the two pine trees next to the garage along with the bald cypress tree were completely covered in lights. The front door and the garage were also bordered with lights. I replaced the driveway lamp and the front porch light with either a red or green light bulb. Finally the Christmas tree was positioned in the living room bay window and I would spray some of that fake snow down in the corner of each of the window panels.
Each year WIBC (a local radio station here in town) would encourage people to phone in any impressive Christmas displays they saw, and one year somebody phoned in our address. They flew their traffic helicopter over our house to check it out, and announced it on the radio. I remember that year we had many cars driving very slowly in front of our house taking pictures of it.
It was pretty cool!
When I moved out of Mom and Dad's house to go to college, all of the decorating stopped, or most of it anyway. I was quite a Christmas person back in those days and I still am. But I do agree with you, our house, and those houses in these pictures are very extreme even by American standards.
