'Tis the season

Lazy bastards... and afraid of ladders.... Next year I'll just rent some country-looking grandparents to knit Christmas gloves on the front porch and welcome me home on Christmas Day. Maybe I'll just purchase some poor people to dress and act like me and celebrate Christmas with my family while I go snorkeling in Belize.

The last thing John Gendron wants to do during the holidays is climb high on his steep-pitched roof to hang a wreath from his chimney. These days, he doesn't have to. Instead, he hires a contractor to put one wreath on his chimney and two others high on the house, and to hang Christmas lights on his home and in the crabapple trees in his front yard.

Tens of thousands of Americans this year will do the same.

Short on time, leery of ladders and lacking expertise for sometimes-elaborate lighting displays, homeowners are opening their wallets and hiring others do the work....

..."They don't mow their lawn, they don't do their landscaping, they don't paint their houses," he said of the typical customers. "And they don't put up Christmas lights."