#195 Light Touch

Xmas lights sure have changed since my day. The 1 to 2 inch bulb is still around but there’s a whole lot of other choices out there. Like one season mini-lites, so cheap and so unreliable, that in the act of taking them down you almost ensure they won’t work next year. Why is that by the way? You can take down a perfectly good set of lights, and no matter how carefully you pack them, come next Christmas there’ll be at least three strings where half the lights don’t work. And it’s never a whole string either, something you can say, oh well, 2.99, chuck it. No, half the string burns so beautifully that you can’t bear to toss it, so you spend the next half hour meticulously checking each bulb and going over the wire for that staple cut you know must be shorting the system. You even do your annual practical eyesight exam, not to mention dexterity test, as you fish out the tiny fuses from the plug end and replace them with the spares you so conscientiously saved last year.
And then there are the light ropes. And the bush lights, those bejeweled beauties that sparkle in the night like jewels on your daytime drab shrubbery. And, of course, who can forget curtain lights or icicle lights, all the rage a few years back and still a staple of gutter adornment everywhere. Every year a new fad seems to take hold in Christmas outdoor décor and curtain lights were a biggie in their time. The choices remain the same: All white, or all one color, or, my personal favorite, multi-colored. I’ve never been an all one color sort of guy. I’ve known those who would put nothing but blue ornaments on a tree and nothing but white lights. I don’t know. Christmas just doesn’t seem like an anal-retentive time of year to me. Yule logs and nativity animals and sloppy eggnog and fudge. Christmas is a time of merriment and abandon.
But there are those whose perfectly regimented white or single colored big bulb lights fixed precisely on their rooftops in straight and stiff attention seem to say order, order above all else. Peace on earth good will to men, okay, but everyone needs to get in line and take a number.
And then there’s the newest Christmas outdoor decoration fad. The inflatables. Big blowup Santas and Rudolphs and Snowmen in a globe. All thanks to little air compressors running all night long. I wish I could say silently. There’s nothing like going out for a neighborhood stroll, looking at the beautiful lights, and humming Xmas carols to the accompaniment of dozens of tiny humming motors.
So far, the gimmick manufacturers have offered up only generic Christmas symbols a la Frosty and Santa. But mark my words, nativity scenes are right around the puffy corner. There’s be a full blowup stable, sheep, and goats and, inflatable science being an imperfect art, there’ll be an odd-looking bloated Joseph, and Mary, looking unfortunately like a bachelors party companion. And, of course, in the true spirit of the season, an inflatable baby Jesus. Batteries not included, Holy Ghost sold separately.
America, ya gotta love it.