A person such as myself, who eats and drinks cynicism — indeed scrubs his teeth every night with cynicism paste — should probably be expected to drop a curmudgeonly scowl upon the Christmas Season and all its trimmings. This could not be further from the truth. In spite of the rampant consumerism that Linus complained about decades ago which has only grown worse since, I am a romantic when it comes to the holidays. I am all about tides and the Yules they carry in. As the weeks of December bustle on through, I greatly enjoy partaking in some of the simple pleasures associated with Christmas. Simple, mind you: “caroling” is something I’m convinced only happens on television, and you can roast someone else’s chestnuts, thank you very much.

One thing I do love about Christmas is the lights. Nothing makes me so jolly (excluding a large bottle of vodka) as trees, buildings and even beloved pets festively festooned in thousands of bulbs of twinkling electric cheer. Of course, living in an apartment which is only just big enough to shoehorn my furniture and other belongings into, no space is available for even a small tree. So I’ve used my lights to adorn the open archway between the front door and the livingroom — as well as the bookshelves near my desk — so that I can sit and marvel at them on demand.

These lights, by the way, are not the dull, quasi-classy “all white” lights that have come in vogue over the last decade. These are the full Technicolor, pulsing, chasing, fading, loud and obnoxious lights I grew up with; the kind guaranteed to piss off your boring conformist neighbors with their drab, colorless displays. I would have bought the really old type that had bulbs as big as your fist which grew hot enough to burn down your tree — and your house with it — if you skipped one day of watering the tree stand, but those have been run out of stores by the Safety Police. Humbug, I say.

Speaking of conformity: let’s talk icicle lights. These were clever once: a long string with shorter strings of varying lengths dangling from it to give the appearance of brightly sparkling icicles skirting the roof line of your house. Then EVERYBODY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD BOUGHT ICICLE LIGHTS. They purchase sets on the cheap, densely packed into bulging boxes sold in bulk at Wal-Mart, so that when they emerge twisted and creased from the package there is no way they will ever be straight enough to resemble icicles ever again, and so they hang, gnarled and disjointed, from the rain gutter in sagging arcs from nails spaced too far apart. People? May we call an end to them, please?

Then there are the net lights. This is a large, square grid of lights that simply gets placed over a bush or shrub to make it look just as though you painstakingly arranged a real string of lights. Except that a large square of perfectly aligned bulbs — draped over a bush like a piece of cheese over a hamburger — does not look anything like you painstakingly arranged a real string of lights. It looks like you are a lazy bastard, and everyone can see that you are. It’s the clip-on necktie of holiday decorations.

Of course, these boring people with their bland all-white displays are only one end of the spectrum. At the other end we have my personal hero: the totally tasteless decorator. She is the neighbor all the stuck-up nitwits on the street natter on about in hushed tones, clucking in disapproval. She blankets her yard with a diorama of tackiness so bright it can be viewed from space: huge multicolored lights, beaming plastic snowmen, and ghastly animatronic Santas. Her Christmas display screams “overcompensation”. Its very presence lowers the surrounding property values. I love it. Although I do draw the line at those giant inflatable snowglobes: ugliness misses the point when you’re paying $150 for it.

The other major event that gets me in the holiday spirit — probably even more so than the lights — is Christmas music. Many of these old classics pin down perfectly that intangible thrill in the air when the holidays approach, in spite of the fact that for many of us, it’s the type of music we wouldn’t be caught dead listening to if it weren’t about Christmas. I mean, tell me that if Burl Ives had sung “Jolly Dolly Biscuits” instead of “Holly Jolly Christmas”, anyone anywhere would still be listening to that song today.

Plus, you can’t beat holiday music for sheer entertainment value. For some reason I will never understand and never question, the holidays make it perfectly acceptible for musicians to be involved in collaborations with other musicians that their managers would normally classify as “Career-Ending Bad Decisions”. And so we are treated to Andrea Bocelli and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas doing a duet on “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, or perhaps Eminem freestyling a version of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” with the B-52s. Pure comedy.

This gushing love letter to the holiday season may seem overly sentimental, perhaps even a bit sappy, and for that I apologize. Clearly, however, it dispels any idea you may have had that I possess a cynical attitude towards Christmastime. Not a single antagonistic thought stains my snow-pure holiday spirit. When I see those lights go up and I hear those songs crooning from the radio, my heart grows, Grinch-style, and I am Merry.

I wish you all Happy Holidays. And I wish you all would get rid of those damned icicle lights.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 9:57 am and is filed under observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.