Seeing the Light

One year, in a fit of nostalgia, my husband had the nerve to suggest that we put multicolor lights on the Christmas tree. I responded with horror: How could he be so declasse? Eventually, I gave in, but I blamed him for our blighted balsam whenever I apologized to our white-light friends for this slip in holiday protocol.

This year, I'm the one with nostalgia flu. In all of my treasured childhood Christmas memories, I have come to realize, there is not a single white light. As Johnny Mathis provides the background music, pulsing, multicolor lights are making the Barbie Dream House that Santa brought come to life.

Sure, white lights are pretty, but I have come to view them as the Canada geese of Christmas decor. When they first arrived, people loved their newness, their novelty. But they just kept reproducing, leaving their droppings everywhere: think icicle lights and wired-up lawn reindeer.

But more to my point, white lights are eerily cold.

By contrast, my best memories of Christmases past are awash in big bulbs of color, and they're as cozy as a pair of stocking-foot pajamas, like taking our annual family drive to see the holiday displays put on by the "rich" people in the suburbs.

We would cruise through the side streets marveling at the "mansions" outlined in lights. Some had life-size carolers on the lawn, complete with piped-in stanzas of "Silent Night," while others had plastic Santas in Buick-size sleighs perched on the roof, eight painted reindeer, hoofs up, ready for takeoff. Every tree, every bush, every fence, every concrete lion guarding the walkways, was covered in color -- blinking, winking, flashing, gyrating, gaudy-as-all-get-out, burn-your-retinas color.

Of course, there was always that one family that was over the top even by our fanatic standards. These people started draping lights on their property in July (a half-million bulbs that you could see from space and a $20,000 electric bill, to boot, rumor had it). Station wagons would line up around the block just to drive by the spectacle, kids' faces pressed against the car windows, eyes bugging out to take it all in.

In the hindsight that is adulthood, I realize that the "mansions" of my three-decker childhood were really split-level ranch houses owned by working-class folks who simply took great pride in decking their halls. And they did so with a colorful generosity of spirit that cannot be conveyed in white minilights.

So now that I'm living on a suburban side street, I feel I have an obligation to give back. What kind of display would I want to see if I were cruising with my parents, brother, and sister today? I can guarantee that no ribbon-candy-chomping child has ever uttered from the back seat: "My, those white lights adorning that center-entrance Colonial are understated yet festive, aren't they, Mommy?"

So I'm going color crazy this year. Maybe I'll even pick up a plastic Frosty the Snowman for the front porch, if all those fabulous people in their split-level mansions haven't scooped them up by now.

I'm even getting my white-light-loving sister into the spirit of things. She's scouring our parents' attic for the aluminum tree of our childhood. We used to hang gold satin balls from it, and I can still feel the heat that emanated from the revolving color-light that threw rays of red, green, blue, and orange upon those fabulously brash branches.

Of course, my sister's only willing to set it up in her basement rec room. This year. That tree and all of it shimmery sentimentality will grow on her like the colored lights of suburbias past grew on me. I give her a year before that tree makes its way to her bay window, bumping out those boring little white lights once and for all.

Doreen Iudica Vigue is a freelance writer living in the suburbs. She can be reached at dvigue@hotmail.com.