Lighting up

It is that time of year, and still much too early even for mid to late November, when we keep a watching brief and high state of alert to spot the first house in the city to put up and activate Christmas lights and decorations.

From past experience there a couple of properties that consistently compete for the dubious honour and one-upmanship brownie points and even if not strictly on our route to and from work, the shops or general errands we will nevertheless make a detour to check who has been victorious between them.

We disregard, of course those households who have left the fascia dangled illuminated icicles up all year round and the student properties where a fake pine tree in a window, lit up from the new term in september, is part of the general kitsch.

It is though Christmas proper begins only after your front door has been visited by ghouls, vampires and pirates (yes, I know???) and thereafter announced formally by the explosion of fireworks. I do not have much of a working knowledge of the Bible and the run up to the birth of Christ but I am pretty sure that trick or treating and bonfire night are not mentioned as main catalysts to the events in the stable. Everyone knows that it truly begins upon finding a holly shaped chocolate novelty behind door number one on an Advent Calendar.

The last few years has certainly seen a proliferation in very public seasonal exhibitions on the front of private homes.

These have in some cases been very extravagant. There have been multiple strings of lights, still, flashing, rhythmic and pulsating, neon bright outlines of festive things such as sleighs, reindeer and oversized stars , inflatables of a bulbous Father Christmas and also that icon of the giving season, Homer Simpson. Natural features of trees and bushes have been draped with twinkling pinpoints and coloured lanterns. I have sensed some dimming of my own house lights when such civic scale installations have been fired up in my neighbourhood.

The policy of affixing as much illumination as physically possible on a house frontage is unfortunate and particularly so to those, like myself, who appreciate a bit of symmetry and regularity. A few kindly souls make a collection for a charitable concern with a bucket attached to a gatepost for loose change and this should be applauded. Others just like to put on a swanky show of unrestrained expenditure to aggravate the neighbours.

I will not even think about this years display at our place until mid December. We are quite modest and conservative in our efforts but feel this is right and fitting for what is still, when we last looked, a religious celebration and festival and not a riot of consumerism and materialism.