If everybody donated 10% of his/her (anticipated) spending on decorations  to a charitable cause, what a great thing it would be.
klk

Silly me! I thought the "holiday spirit" was about 'peace on earth & goodwill to all men!' not 'how many flashy lights can I squeeze onto my house?'. Seriously, why have the lights at all? Make a wreath for your door (from environmentally friendly materials, natch!), decorate your room & tree with items that don't require power.

So you may as well make them adapt. People will always want christmas lights at Christmas, because its whats been done for years and most people are animals of habit. All we can do instead of telling people that those lights are dumb and to go fully green is to smartly adapt their habits to creative green ones. Thankfully there are companies who are working to 'green up' things like christmas lights.

I'll second the first post, and surmise that the energy required to produce, package, and ship (from China probably) the solar panels is probably greater than the minuscule energy consumption the LEDs would have if powered by household electricity.

Strings of a couple of hundred LEDs use only a dozen watts; coupled with a timer, the power draw over the 4-6 week holiday season is going to be minimal. (Compare that to the "traditional" lights you're replacing at ½ to 1 watt each!)

So I'd go buy some LED bulbs. Or, even better, turn your house solar as suggested above.

I don't think sustainability is about sacrifice. If you enjoy christmas lights (it's a tradition to put them up with your family, everyone in your neighborhood participates, it makes you smile and reminds you of all the spirit and peace on earth stuff) then go right ahead! If we keep asking people to make sacrifices, they'll run the other way, credit card in hand.  
I say go for the solar powered christmas lights or invest in the LED's and forgo the usual gifts this year (because honestly, do you really need more stuff?) and ask everyone to pitch in for your shiny new PV system for christmas. You'll have to come up with most of the money yourself, but if everyone in your family payed for a portion of it (a few kw perhaps?) you'd have a special gift that keeps on giving year after year.

Cut people some slack.  Yes, people could have a great Christmas without Christmas lights.  People could also have a pretty decent life without meat, cars, vacations, and all those other "environmental evils" that consume the earth's resources.  But if we strip away everything, what would be the point of life?  I like Christmas lights.  It's not because I'm a creature of habit, or socially brainwashed or anything; I just find Christmas lights very warm and inviting (especially when they are covered with snow!)  If you really like lights, buy LED lights.  It seems like there's a real tendency of many enviros to judge others for committing environmental transgressions that don't appeal to them, while turning a blind eye to their own indulgences.  

Everyone will have something they like to do that consumes more resources - we're human, and it's exhuasting (and expensive) to deprive ourselves of everything or switch to the most environmentally friendly gadget.  Just work on what you can, and cut back where you can.  It's good to feel the pinch, but it's hard when you feel squeezed all the time.

The shear cost of Solar Cells and Batteries, ans well as the maintenance of the batteries far out cost the energy savings that you could achieve by replacing your holiday lighting with LED's.

When you can run that same number of lights for 1/10th the Energy used by conventional lighting, why bother with Solar Cells that could cost well into the 10 of thousands of dollars.