Pining

So, I remember when I was a child that the lights on the Christmas tree were big bulbs, and they were an array of colors, rainbow colors not pastels. Tinsel, long thin strands of silver the size and shape of fettucini, we draped over the boughs. Ours, the kids, were in clumps like the imaginary ice represented by the tinsel all fell on a couple of branches. Amazingly, by morning, the ice storm was more evenly dispersed. I know how that happens now because when our children put ornaments on our tree they are grouped in bunches on the lower half, but by morning we have worked the same magic.

Also, the trees held the lion share of the lights. We might have had lights somewhere else in the house like a mantle, or a staircase, or around a window. Maybe an electric candle centered in a window. And the tree was placed in a front living room where passersby could see the tree. We drove to look at lights and what we meant was that we were looking at our neighbor's trees in the window, usually a large pane window in the front of the house.

I walked our neighborhood a couple of nights ago, and while I saw a lot of lights, I saw two trees. Our tree is not in the front of the house because the front of our house, that portion fronting the road, contains a foyer and two bedrooms. The trees are in the back of the houses now because that is where the living areas are. The trees, our living areas, have recessed themselves into the deeper bowels of the house now.

I wonder if the architecture contributed to people's detached lives or if the lives demanded the architecture.

There is entrepreneurial intelligence behind the start-up, small businesses that will put up and take down your Christmas lights for you. I think that is smart. And sad.

In a list of good things and good times, sitting with your children as they watch The Little Drummer boy, one wearing full Batman regalia and another in pajamas and a cushy robe, and sucking on Freezoni's from QuikTrip, is way up there.