If there were a Christmas Tree Lane in my town, it would be my street. Starting on Thanksgiving and gearing up in earnest this past weekend, our quiet, tree-lined residential byway becomes a slow-motion highway of holiday revelers driving 3 mph up and down the road to check out the cool holiday displays. It's really cool to live on such a festive street, as it makes every nighttime sojourn to the store or to basketball practice a trip through a (California) winter wonderland. Most of the homes on my street are of the two-story variety and three-fourths of them are strung with lights and festooned with every possible Christmas-y decoration, from mangers to wooden character cutouts to inflatable snow globes. On any other street in any other town, my house would be appropriately decorated. Our nicely-decorated living room Christmas tree fills the front window and two small, lighted Christmas trees border our garage door. Our gutter is lined by a string of lights that is simple, yet festive and we soon will drape some bushes with white lights and place a lighted snowman in the front yard. But compared to the rest of my street, my house is the Charlie Brown Christmas tree: simple, bare, sparse, yet symbolic of the season. Despite peer pressure from my sons that we add enough lights so that our home is visible to the International Space Station, we will keep it simple and modest, even if it means our driveway remains the turnaround point for holiday lights gazers. Simplicity was good enough for Charlie, and it's good enough for me. Good grief. (Photo courtesy of Ted Murphy's Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedmurphy/3068154256/)
Monday, December 7, 2009
A Christmas lights inferiority tale
If there were a Christmas Tree Lane in my town, it would be my street. Starting on Thanksgiving and gearing up in earnest this past weekend, our quiet, tree-lined residential byway becomes a slow-motion highway of holiday revelers driving 3 mph up and down the road to check out the cool holiday displays. It's really cool to live on such a festive street, as it makes every nighttime sojourn to the store or to basketball practice a trip through a (California) winter wonderland. Most of the homes on my street are of the two-story variety and three-fourths of them are strung with lights and festooned with every possible Christmas-y decoration, from mangers to wooden character cutouts to inflatable snow globes. On any other street in any other town, my house would be appropriately decorated. Our nicely-decorated living room Christmas tree fills the front window and two small, lighted Christmas trees border our garage door. Our gutter is lined by a string of lights that is simple, yet festive and we soon will drape some bushes with white lights and place a lighted snowman in the front yard. But compared to the rest of my street, my house is the Charlie Brown Christmas tree: simple, bare, sparse, yet symbolic of the season. Despite peer pressure from my sons that we add enough lights so that our home is visible to the International Space Station, we will keep it simple and modest, even if it means our driveway remains the turnaround point for holiday lights gazers. Simplicity was good enough for Charlie, and it's good enough for me. Good grief. (Photo courtesy of Ted Murphy's Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedmurphy/3068154256/)
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