BLUE LIGHT DISTRICT
Seasonal lights were supposed to be red, green, and white. That’s the way it was when I was a kid. Therefore that was the rule.
Other rules applied: No blankets of lights wrapped around shrubs, like they were caught in fishing nets. You must wind a single string of lights (multi-colored) in an ascending spiral from bottom to top. It was acceptable to drip white icicles from the eves. It was also acceptable for an entire neighborhood go for white lights only. This exception was allowed because the monochromatic tidiness calmed my easily-agitated, overly-organized mind.
Overwhelming evidence supported my rule: Santa didn’t wear a scrap of blue. No one ever heard of Rudolph the blue-nosed reindeer. And Bing Crosby wasn’t dreaming of a blue Christmas.
Our own neighborhood had no holiday decorations. It had grown dark over the years, houses blinking out one by one. The last yard-decorating family, our next-door neighbors, moved away last summer. This year, after a trip to the grocery store for Thanksgiving supplies, I turned the corner onto my block. Munching a candy cane, I was happy to rest my eyes from the strain of bright lights already strung in the rest of the city. I rested my brain from the responsibility of holding high standards for other people’s decorations.
Three blocks from home, there was a faint blue glow in the distance. Police car? Ambulance? Star of Bethlehem?
Two blocks away, the field of blue shimmered like a mirage in the dessert of our pitch black street.
A chemical fire?
A block away, the blue light was so intense, I put on my sunglasses.
A UFO?
It was our next-door neighbor’s house.
My astonished Honda coasted to a stop, and I took off my sunglasses.
Blue Christmas lights outlined the front of the house, the eaves, and roof. Grapefruit-sized teal bulbs bordered both sides of the driveway. They climbed the chimney. The front door was a solid mass of twinkling cobalt. Blue strobes pulsed in the shape of a bow above the door. Sky-blue lights ran along the handrail going up the front steps. Turquoise lights blanketed the shrubs and the trunk of an embarrassed maple. They marked off the perimeter of the yard like crime scene tape. They framed the bay window that overlooked the street. And the Christmas tree in the window? A ten-foot tower of blinking baby blue.
I raised the candy cane in a toast.
Well played, Universe. Well played.
Seasonal lights were supposed to be red, green, and white. That’s the way it was when I was a kid. Therefore that was the rule.
Other rules applied: No blankets of lights wrapped around shrubs, like they were caught in fishing nets. You must wind a single string of lights (multi-colored) in an ascending spiral from bottom to top. It was acceptable to drip white icicles from the eves. It was also acceptable for an entire neighborhood go for white lights only. This exception was allowed because the monochromatic tidiness calmed my easily-agitated, overly-organized mind.
Overwhelming evidence supported my rule: Santa didn’t wear a scrap of blue. No one ever heard of Rudolph the blue-nosed reindeer. And Bing Crosby wasn’t dreaming of a blue Christmas.
Our own neighborhood had no holiday decorations. It had grown dark over the years, houses blinking out one by one. The last yard-decorating family, our next-door neighbors, moved away last summer. This year, after a trip to the grocery store for Thanksgiving supplies, I turned the corner onto my block. Munching a candy cane, I was happy to rest my eyes from the strain of bright lights already strung in the rest of the city. I rested my brain from the responsibility of holding high standards for other people’s decorations.
Three blocks from home, there was a faint blue glow in the distance. Police car? Ambulance? Star of Bethlehem?
Two blocks away, the field of blue shimmered like a mirage in the dessert of our pitch black street.
A chemical fire?
A block away, the blue light was so intense, I put on my sunglasses.
A UFO?
It was our next-door neighbor’s house.
My astonished Honda coasted to a stop, and I took off my sunglasses.
Blue Christmas lights outlined the front of the house, the eaves, and roof. Grapefruit-sized teal bulbs bordered both sides of the driveway. They climbed the chimney. The front door was a solid mass of twinkling cobalt. Blue strobes pulsed in the shape of a bow above the door. Sky-blue lights ran along the handrail going up the front steps. Turquoise lights blanketed the shrubs and the trunk of an embarrassed maple. They marked off the perimeter of the yard like crime scene tape. They framed the bay window that overlooked the street. And the Christmas tree in the window? A ten-foot tower of blinking baby blue.
I raised the candy cane in a toast.
Well played, Universe. Well played.
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