It's Me -vs- the Griswolds. Christmas light competition in my Downtown neighborhood

Yes, I live Downtown. But it’s a neighborhood, folks, and that’s a fact. All the one-upmanship, the covered dish comparisons at gatherings, lawn mowing and raking status comments…its all there. And ‘tis the season for the Grandaddy of all head-to-head matchups - the Christmas light displays.

I’m not into it. Neither is my husband, who’d much rather just hang LED solar lights in all our trees all year long for, well, some reason. But holy moly, the neighbors are mounting campaigns. For example - last night, 9pm: hired workers (yes, hired workers) scaling the neighbors porch in the dark to hang lights. At 9pm! Meanwhile, the Griswolds next door to her have had the braggin’ rights for about a week, completely enclosing every 10 ft column on their new Charleston style home with clear bulbs, and a wreath facing…my empty back 40. So then, KABLAMMO, it was ON! Its spreading, too. Illuminated Santa w/ a team of reindeer to the front right of us. Lit-up wreaths straight across. More clear bulbs on stairs down the street…hundreds of them, mind you, eliminating the need for Progress Energy street lights. And oddly enough, it seems that each one of these neighbors is from South Carolina, and none of them spend all their time here. I really don’t think there’s a serious connection with the South Carolina thing there, I’m just saying. A state with no helmet law is gonna produce some wacky holiday mirth.

Now, my Gran used to decorate for Christmas. Colored bulbs, all from the 60’s and 70’s, lined the porch and the front roofline. Big plastic Santa. My favorite was the old Stroh’s beer snowman she stole from when she worked at Ingle’s in the late 70’s, early 80’s, with a homemade wrapped Christmas box where the 12-pack used to sit on the flat hand. And it all went up. Every single year. Right down to the chirping bird ornament in the tree, who’s batteries hadn’t been changed in so long it had a circa 1980 Ray-O-Vac 9-volt still inside. What a sick bird chirping slower and slower as the weeks went on had to do with Christmas I don’t know, but it was there. Every single year. My thoughts are mainly about Christmas Eve when we’d all go to her house and celebrate as a family. There was no competition with the gifts, it was what you could afford that someone might need, with the occasional splurge for someone who deserved it, or if the bonus from Steelcase came before the 24th. Then open the presents fast, and eat faster, because you’re holding up the poker game. We don’t do any of that any more at all since she passed away. No lights to speak of, no gatherings of everyone for longer than a couple of hours…long enough to eat and open presents for just the kids now, and someone’s always missing.

I wish the exuberance of the light displays were a substitute for those things in the world today. Not a “have and have not” thing, but a way to try to bring us all back to when those kind of displays were just for sheer wonderment and not out of some reason to compete with each other. And because I don’t have them on my house isn’t because I don’t care about Christmas…its because I’d rather have the memory of how it used to make me feel when we’d pull up in her driveway. And I won’t compete with that.