The Lights of the Christmas Season

I love the Christmas season. It’s my favorite time of year for more reasons than I can enumerate here. But I love almost every aspect except one—but online shopping has been a boon that spares me most of the only part I really dislike – fighting traffic and crowds around retail areas.

My poor attempt to get a picture of the balls on
a tree in my side yard.

Among the many things that make Christmas special are the light displays. I still remember from my childhood times when my parents would load us all in the car and we’d drive around gaping at the wonderful lights arranged on house and garages. It helped that I grew up in a New York City suburb on Long Island with a high population density and houses spaced close together. There were always spectacular displays to see. We would normally take a trip into the city, meaning Manhattan, at least once during the season to visit relatives there, and that was even more of a treat. Whatever its defects and blemishes visible by daylight, the city turns into a kind of fairyland at night—at least in the eyes of a child.

Perhaps that’s why I’m still a sucker for amazing light displays, even the over-the-top tackiness of houses decked in basement-to-ceiling lights, icicles, blinkers, inflatable snowmen, reindeers and Santas, even spotlights and nets.

My all-time favorite light display, however, is the one that goes on in my own neighborhood this time each year.

The entire area is decked out with lighted tree balls, many hung high up in the trees and thickly enough to turn the entire neighborhood magical. The balls are made from chicken wire, then strung
with lights. When hoisted into the tree they become shining moons in rainbow colors.

Sadly they don’t photograph well. Even professionals struggle to capture the beauty and majesty of them.  There are a few here that give you the idea but mostly it’s something you have to experience.

The only downside is that attracts a lot of traffic to a neighborhood that isn’t really built for it.  But the gaping tourists are the price we pay for the loveliest non-commercial display anywhere!

WISHING EVERYONE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS OR A HAPPY HOLIDAY!

Good Grief! Today is What???

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

This year the Christmas elves have morphed into malign gremlins, entangling me in strings of tinsel and lights and sending me crashing flat on my face. I try not to post just one essay to both my first Wednesday blogs, preferring to do two different posts on two different subjects, but this time I really have no choice. You see, I forgot. It is now almost half an hour after they should have gone up online, and I am sitting desperately writing in a dark cold office while every other creature in the house is contentedly sleeping, including The Husband.

I do have good excuses/reasons – many of them. Christmas shopping. Out of town family come to visit. Self-indulgently, parties. A couple of meetings that could not be missed. Two hard deadlines breathing fire down my neck – one to finish a book, the other to finish edits. A chronic physical health problem flaring up, as usual at the most inconvenient time. And, perhaps the most annoying of all, this is our seventh week of having no internet at home, meaning that I will be breakfasting at my favorite internet café as soon as it opens in order to get this posted. I really don’t know whether to go ‘sigh’ or ‘grrrr.’ Or both.

As I have said before, do not marry an overly-analytical man. It does get ugly.

So now what shall I say to redeem myself? Nothing, because the forgetting of such a long-standing and treasured responsibility is unacceptable. Hand to heart, I promise to be better.

With any luck at all, all our Christmas shopping will be done this week. Except for my own present, I do all the shopping for the family, but I have been known to have to buy my own occasionally. In both The Husband’s and my families we only give token gifts as we are all blessed with what we really need, but the list is long and it is hard to find even tokens that are not outrageously expensive. As I lurch from store to store, happily shrinking list and traumatized credit card in hand, it is a painful mental gymnastic to think of something appropriate to give each individual. I predict that the gift-card people will be getting most if not all of our business this year.

So, dear reader, the hour is wee, the office is cold, and I am tired. Again, I beg your pardon for such culpable behavior, do promise to be better, and wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas!

(And if you see a couple of elves with sinister expressions carrying ropes of tinsel and lights, please don’t tell them that you’ve seen me!)

Resolutions, Grand Plans and Good Intentions–Oh My!

Ends of years seem to be a time for assessing the past and making plans for the future. Many of us take the opportunity to decide whether to do more of the same or change gears altogether.

Often it’s a little of both.

Making resolutions seems to be a requirement but how often do the best intended resolutions fall at the first hurdle.

Grand plans are all good — until we let them turn into burdens we are only too glad to abandon. And that in turn turns its wicked head into guilt that we didn’t keep a promise we had made to ourselves.

I think our foremothers and forefathers had a better idea for the best use of this time of year. In very ancient times, the Romans (and people of many other civilizations) gathered together and celebrated life and the many blessings of having survived the year.

In Celtic societies, bonfires kept the long nights of winter at bay. In more recent times, fires were transformed into lights on trees and now, thousands of lights on houses.

This evening, as I gathered with friends, we traveled through row upon row of houses lit from front gate to chimney top with festive lights, reminiscent of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. When I was small, my family drove to the other side of the city to see the Christmas trees and holiday lights decorating the homes of San Francisco’s wealthiest residents.

To me, this was a gift of sharing the joyous season. Our tree was not as grand but the meaning was the same. The sense that, as a community, we shared this season as a time of merriment and hope.

Velesé Vánoce. 聖誕節快樂 Nadolig Llawen. מערי ניטל

Շնորհավոր Սուրբ Ծնունդ. Buon Natale. 메리 크리스마스 Joyeux Noël.

Wesołych Świąt. Feliz Navidad. メリークリスマス С Рождеством.

Merry Christmas to all!