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2002-12-06 - 5:47 a.m.

It's not beginning to look a lot like Christmas. At least not around this little city.

Driving to work yesterday there was a noticeable lack of Christmas decorations winking in the predawn darkness. During the 15-mile trek from my home to the workplace I saw only one house sketched in red lights and one business boasting a lighted Happy Holidays sign. I realize most people shut down their outside lights at bedtime, and maybe it's still too early in the season for the lights and other Christmas trimmings to go up, but it seems people are falling behind in the festivities and it's dull and drab.

Years ago Dad used to bring all the holiday decorations down from the attic, then work tirelessly untangling the light strings and replacing burned out bulbs, damning the short lifespan of those large, colorful bulbs each time he had to add a new one. Dad and I were inseparable, and I had to help with this chore, tangling more than untangling light cords and making more work for Dad. He was patient with me and we'd finally complete our knotted task and drag our lights out into the snow to finish our decorating.

He would light up the front eve of our house with a multicolored string and zigzag strands around the two blue spruce trees hugging the front entrance to our home. Then we'd bring out the mechanical snowman he'd made one fall and direct a spotlight at him. Frosty, designed after the big cowboy on The Frontier Casino in Las Vegas, waved a one-armed holiday greeting to families touring around town to see Christmas decorations. This was before the creation of twinkling icicle or net sets and lighted holiday silhouettes of Santa and his sleigh and leaping reindeer and three-dimensional illuminated sculptures of reindeer.

Back in the good old days.

When I was a kid I enjoyed helping Dad deck our house, and it was fun riding around with my parents seeing all the other holiday displays. As an adult, I've never gotten into decorating the outside of the house. If not whipped into it, I would probably forget to deck the halls inside the house. In college I was lucky if I could rub two nickels together to buy gifts for my parents and I lived in an apartment, so outside adornments weren’t possible. As a young adult living in my first home what money I had went to pay the mortgage and I couldn’t afford the extra expense for electricity to power the decorations. When I could afford the luxury, the pretentious neighborhood where I was living determined it was mandatory to bedeck my home in flamboyant holiday gewgaws. Their ruling to decide what I would do turned me off, so no Christmas lights adorned my house.

Within days of moving into muckity muck a neighbor, aka Elvis, landed on my doorstep (in May!) and gave me the business about the annual neighborhood Christmas light extravaganza. No doubt about it, it was a race to the finish and a show to beat the Jones's, and by gawd everybody had to play! And, Elvis said, he stood out on his back deck Thanksgiving night and blasted off a shotgun--the signal for light switches to be flipped on, lighting up Norchester Hills! I stared at Elvis, wondering if I should tell him I wasn't going to play the one-upmanship Christmas game, or if I should run like hell and get outta Dodge before the damned fool starting blowing off his shotgun.

Sure enough, the sun went down on Thanksgiving, Elvis blasted both barrels and houses and yards were awash in a garish rainbow of colors. I stood at my front window in quiet, staring amazement, mouth gaping, looking at the gaudy displays. Oh.My.God. Apparently everyone in town thought they had to travel the streets to see this ostentatious presentation; from sundown until midnight the neighborhood was jammed with slow moving traffic, making it nearly impossible to maneuver the streets or gain access to driveways.

In subsequent years I considered having Bah Humbug scripted from wood,tacking oversized, flashing lights to it and waiting anxiously by my light switch for the blast of Elvis's gun! The neighborhood covenant commanding participation in outlandish Christmas ornamentation tweaked my Missouri mulishness. I wouldn't play then, and even after moving to the wilderness I don't play. Since I'm isolated in the timber it seems senseless to hang lights and decorations for the wildlife to enjoy, but I do enjoy tasteful displays on other people’s homes.

If I had the old mechanical snowman Dad made I'd proudly display him. Frosty was a simple fellow, made from plywood, nuts and bolts and hand-carved wooden nose and eyes. He was driven by an electric motor Dad had taken off an old table saw, and he wore a ragged red stocking cap and a scarf Mom had cut from red tartan woolen cloth. He wasn’t fancy, but he had more character than any ropy light sculpture popular today. Unfortunately, he was stolen from Mom's yard the Christmas after Dad died. Frosty was 34 years old that winter.

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