Christmas Lights

Compared to much of Altadena, my neighborhood is pretty conservative. Come October, we don’t have severed limbs on the lawn or bodies hanging from the pines. At Christmastime, you won’t find an inflatable Santa dolly on the roof. For winter decorations, the palette red and gold, ambiguous, from a religious perspective.

A while back, say three years pre-gentrification, in the early 2000s, a guy a couple of houses down from mine would put up a plastic Nativity scene. Whenever the wind blew, which it does at this time of year, the holy heads would pop off and go rolling down the street. “Hey Ronny,” I’d say, after a walk with the dog, “Moses is in the gutter at Punahou Road.” And he’d nod, thank me, and go fetch the head. My friend Matt, who loves it when I’m wrong, said, “Sweetheart, Moses? That was Joseph or a Wise Man.” Big deal, so Matt went to Catholic school.

Growing up, our family did not engage in garish holiday displays. No one in the neighborhoods did, though everyone put up some festive lights. My parents agonized over this – We had a front yard so manicured, so manipulated, it was practically Japanese. Mom and Dad would no sooner string up blinking lights than paint a Madonna on the garage door . How could we join in this singularly American custom without sacrificing artistic integrity?

Finally, Mom and Dad decided on dark blue and green lights to line the roof. At the first lighting, my sister, brother, and I stood in the glow, assessing the result. My brother said, “You guys look like someone beat you up.”

Sometimes nothing is better than something.

“I like it,” my friend from middle school said when she came to spend the night. “It’s creepy.”

(Questionable lighting choices aside, no one could build a snowman like my dad. That's me and my old man.)