Lights

These are the snowflake lights strung across the wisteria arbour at my house. That, and a very modest string of coloured lights along the porch railing are my only contributions to this year's neighbourhood display.

However, I don't feel too out of place. Most people around me have some sort of lights up now, but mine's not the street that people bring their children on drive-around Christmas light-tours.

Nope, that would be one street up from me...and two streets down from me. These are places decked out like an electric hallucinogenic fairyland---garlands of lights, illuminated reindeer, shrubbery glowing from within.

While the tastefulness of giant, lighted, inflatable snowmen is dubious at best, I'm sure it makes some little people smile. Most little kids are okay with tacky.

One nearby street is lined with avenues of little trees on both sides that are all lit up with white lights. EVERY house is decorated. It's quite beautiful. One New Year's after midnight, some friends and I took a early morning stroll there. It was a serene and glistening way to start a year.

However.

I'd hate to be the new guy with less than bubbly Christmas cheer moving onto that street unaware of the Yuletide peer pressure: newcomers are most likely "encouraged" to participate.

Leastwise, I'd hate to be the dark house on the block there. Personally I'd be out there stringing lights on my trees with numbed fingers right now if I lived one block to the south.

Ahhh...but I don't. :)

Me, I'm comfortable with my across-the-street neighbour whose lights are perpetually on the fritz; one side or the other of their lone light-string flickers erratically like a neon sign. No pressure to keep up with the Joneses there.

The only time a neighbour's light display made me cringe was when they had some sort of electric candelabrum in their living-room window. The light from it flickered so wildly against their living-room curtains that I kept thinking their house was on fire.