Christmas Lights - Part 2

For me, the simple, single white candle in the window is the most magical of all Christmas lights. The soft glow of the flickering yellow flame holds back the dark of the night and reflects both on the window and on the snow on the ground outside. The scent of the melting wax and the silky-sticky feel of the evergreen bough draped on the window sill engage the other senses.

My earliest memories of Christmas lights are two-fold. When I was just a little boy, my family would travel to my grandmother's house for a great big holiday dinner - a huge turkey, mash potatoes, creamed corn, cranberry, warm dinner rolls fresh from the oven, gravy, pumpkin and mince pies as well as some (Duncan Hines) cake all served at a huge table where at least a dozen people sat enjoying themselves, the jokes and conversation, and the hardy food.

Usually, my Uncle Jim (my hero), Aunt Mary and cousin Pat, would come to this dinner. During the day, my grandfather would have set up and decorated the tree and my grandmother would have carefully placed her ceramic caroling figurines complete with gas streetlights in the fireplace on a little stage built just for them (my grandparents only once ever had a fire that I can recall!) and the room would be left darkened. When dinner was over, we all would get up and go into the room with the tree - where we would all stand together and sing Joy to the World or the Little Drummer Boy as my Grandfather turned on all the holidays lights; the window candles, the tree lights, the spotlight on the choir in the fireplace and the neatest light of them all was this rotating spot light that shone on the tree - as it turned a different colored light would shine - yellow, red, green, and blue, each in turn. The tinsel in the tree would glisten and the warmth in our tummies and the smiles on each other's faces... well... that was Christmas!

My Uncle Jim lived in New Jersey just across the river from my Grandparents - and he would have all of us come for a holiday visit too. One of the highlights of this trip would be all of us piling into a big old station wagon and riding down the block from his house to a neighborhood that prided itself in burning megawatts of electricity to light up Christmas displays. I vaguely recall that there was some sort of contest - at any rate, my Uncle Jim would always stop at the winner's house where we would get out of the crowded car and just stare at all the lights, sometimes shielding our eyes from the brilliance - as they numbered in the thousands.

Only later did Chevy Chase and "Christmas Vacation" come along with the Griswold family's home lighting display, did anything looked like the winning house. You could practically hear them at the local power plant saying, "Oh guys! switch on the backup nuclear power plant! That insane guy has turned on all his Christmas lights again!!"

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