Warning: bah humbug alert.

Like it or not, the holiday season is in full swing with 24/7 Christmas music and piles of specialty catalogs coming through the mail (yay, Signals).

It’s also time for Rochester Michigan to top Clark Griswold’s Christmas light spectacular that not only blinded the neighbors and ruined their stereo, but was a tradition (see “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”).

In its fourth year, the Rochester Downtown Development Authority will attract thousands of shoppers to its boutiques and restaurants this season within its annual Christmas event The Big, Bright Light Show.

In 2006, there were half a million lights strung on the facades of the buildings on Main Street. Now, there are — drum roll please — more than one million LED lights lining the buildings of Main Street.

The show will plug in on Monday, Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. during what they call “Lagniappe,” which is Creole for “a little something extra.” It’s extra all right. The show promises to be “bigger” and “brighter” than ever, and to continue getting bigger and brighter every year.

The lights will be glaring on every building on Main Street from the south bridge to Romeo Road and along Fourth Street from 6 p.m. to midnight every night until Jan. 3, 2010.

Yes, it is a beautiful sight to see. It’s gorgeous, it’s breathtaking, and it’s worth the drive. It has been such a successful event that it drew in on average almost 30 percent increase in business in its first year and over a million visitors.

It is great for the small businesses in this district that big shiny things can still draw a crowd in our modern times.

The economic impact and community pride is one thing. But there’s another scene from “Christmas Vacation” that pops into mind. How fast are those electricity meters on Main Street spinnig around on those nights?

They are going a lot faster than the drivers going “ooh” and “ahh” as they slowly creep through town. Anybody who lives north of Dairy Queen can testify that the hoopla doesn’t do much for improving commute time.

Is Los Angeles’ cloud going to start making its way to Rochester? OK, that’s just silly, but still.

Isn’t the United States in the middle of an energy and climate crisis right now? Aren’t there families in the tri-county area struggling to keep a light on over their kitchen table?

Just because they are LED lights and they use less energy than the giant Christmas tree bulbs of the 1980s, that shouldn’t encourage people to use more of them. That’s like putting twice as much sour cream on your burrito because it’s the light sour cream.

Aren’t we told that one light bulb makes a huge difference? Why in the hell would anybody bother turning the electronic flow off when they leave their dorm room when a few miles down the road there are about a million light bulbs on because they look pretty?

It’s already so easy to toss aside the fact that something as small as turning off a computer monitor for the night can save a considerable amount of energy, especially if a lot of people are doing it.

And downtown Rochester isn’t the only place where energy is wasted over the holiday season. The Village at Adams and Walton puts a bunch of purple lights on practically every tree on its grounds in the winter.

Isn’t there a way to attract shoppers to our local business districts that doesn’t involve slapping everybody in the face who shuts their lights off during the day to save a small percentage of the world’s energy?

Submit your own ideas on how to attract the masses without blinding them to [email protected].