Christmas (De)lights

In one of the suburban houses I grew up in, my bedroom was on the second floor overlooking a cul-de-sac. Across from the cul-de-sac was a barren field, and beyond that was a concrete wall that bordered a busy shopping center. There was a Bel Air grocery store, a Longs Drugs, and a pizza place where I had my first job. When I was old enough, past the point of needing the playground that had been pledged but never built on that site, my friends and I would walk into the field and through a gap in the wall to buy ice cream sandwiches from Longs. Our jaunts through the field are a cornerstone memory from my years in that house.

I also clearly remember, as a not-yet adolescent, peering through my window at the shopping center when it was decorated for Christmas. I had binoculars. At night, mostly, I would hold them to my face and home in on shiny strands of red garland wrapped around the parking lot light poles. There may have been wreaths or bows up there, too. The tops of the poles were all I could see over the height of the concrete wall, which was about two suburban blocks away. Their Christmas garlands felt like a secret treat that only I could espy from the house. I got the same frisson looking at them as I got from sitting alone under my family’s Christmas tree, with the room lights off, in the glow of those tiny pointed-end light bulbs.

My favorite part of the season was, and still is, basking in the vibe created by bright, cheerful things elevating us out of the darkness. Yes, there is too much materialism around Christmas itself, but the holidays are a lovely time of banding together to fight the doldrums of winter. We reject the dormancy that takes over the natural world; we put up electric lights and fake snowmen. Then we pile into cars, or go out walking in the cold, for the thrill of seeing what our neighbors have created. Maybe that thrill we get is a sense of triumph, an affirmation that we will survive until spring.