Christmas-nomics

Two totally unrelated items about economics and Christmas:

1. Daniel Gross writes in Slate that Christmas tree sales are a good concurrent indicator of consumer spending during Christmas.
   
2. Christmas lights and timers. With the invention of the little LED Christmas lights that use very little electricity, it probably makes no sense to buy a $30 outdoor timer that will turn the lights off during the day. I haven't done the calculations, but I can readily imagine that leaving even 120 of these lights on for 24 hours a day for a month adds no more than a few dollars to the electricity bill. So why bother with a timer? In fact, if the prices represent the opportunity costs of using the scarce resources in various ways, it would downright anti-social and inefficient to buy a timer for these lights.

Update: There's more here, at the new site for this blog.