This piece is for all those reluctant men of Christian homes that are summoned every year to do what they might have never guessed they had signed on when they tied the knot. What I ‘m talking about is the annual ritual of putting up the outdoor Christmas lights.
The nagging usually starts around Thanksgiving. “Honey, you better start early this year. Not like last year when all neighbors had their lights up and we were a lousy spot of darkness.” My wife doesn’t nag me like this, nor does she call me “honey,” thank goodness. Instead she couches her wish as a matter of caring for my health. “You better do it now before it gets freezing out there and you catch a cold.” When I was still teaching, I had lots of excuses. “I have exams to prepare.” A few days later: “I have exams and papers to grade.” Well, it almost always turned out as she had predicted. When I finally found the time and, even more importantly, mustered the state of mind to put up the lights it was really freezing cold.
Putting up Christmas lights is like a little enterprise. Unless you have planned every step, you find yourself going up and down the ladder several times. It took me a good number of years but I finally gave up relying on my memory to identify which string of lights goes around the door and which down each side of the stoop railings and over the bushes. So, I started to store the strings in different bags with a piece of paper telling me where each string had to go next year. Of course, the cardinal rule is you don’t spread the lights before you have made sure they work. You miss this step and you have major problems. “This string doesn’t light. I have a good one but the they are white.” To which you hear. “Don’t dare mix green and white lights. What will people say? We are cheap? Besides, I hate white.” Again, let me clarify my wife doesn’t talk like that. The dialogue applies to some impossible wife that some poor soul out there had the privilege to marry. Now, if you are really cheap, you start looking for the culprit. That stupid light that went kaput and threw the rest into darkness. And when you find it, you look for a replacement you never bothered to check whether you had.
I am a minimalist when it comes to Christmas lights. Which is another way to say I am lazy. I spread the strings down each railing and then I throw them on the bushes pretending I follow some secret pattern. Regardless, I always deliver satisfaction and earn my wife’s praise. “They look so nice!” I stretch my head up and take in her approval with great pride as well as with relief that I ‘m done for the year. The fact, however, is that no matter how you spread the lights around, come darkness, they look like they were arranged by a designer. It’s all about brightness against darkness. Any pattern wins. All you have to do to believe this is to gaze at the sky in a moonless night. Do the stars follow any grand cosmic pattern? No. And yet the sight mesmerizes us.
When you finish and you think you are in the clear for another whole year, then comes the competition that can scramble everything up. You are returning from a nice night out and as you turn into your street, there it is. The house with a million lights all the way to the roof and around the door and windows and up and down the trees, hugging the bushes and, “Oh my God, they blink in different colors.” That’s when you (the man) say inside your head “Oh, crap. The show offs had to do this!” And then the damage control starts. “Huh, they look gaudy. And who knows how much they spent to have someone put them up. What real man outsources Christmas lights to someone else?” And then the clincher: “Besides, baby Jesus was born in a humble stable. This is so much out of the Christmas spirit.” If you escape with some approving nod from your wife you know you are a lucky SOB; if not, good luck next year.
I live in a neighborhood with many Jewish homes. You can tell your Jewish neighbors from the Hanukkah Menorah that rests in the inside window ledge. But you don’t see outdoor lights. So, I asked a Jewish friend, “how come?” I got the very informative answer: “We just didn’t catch up with the custom.” Seriously? The Maccabees spilled their blood to fight those badass Hellenistic Syrians to keep the Jewish faith and all they deserve is an eight-candle Menorah?
And what about the Hindus? Every fall they celebrate the Diwali – the festival of lights. So, where are their Diwali outdoor lights? The bottom line is we Christians of all stripes, from atheist Christians to devout Christians are suckers. Just because some Lutheran Germans started decorating their Christmas trees and homes with lights we had to follow.
But if you feel like blaming somebody, reserve your opprobrium for that invention-crazy guy Thomas Edison who was not happy to invent electricity, but he went on to put up the first electric outdoor Christmas lights in 1880. And, of course, soon after, good, money-hungry capitalism took over and another invention pal, Edward Johnson, had the idea of making money by introducing string lights. Thank you, guys! From then on, like a meme, Christmas lights and decorations took a life of their own and proliferated in all different forms and directions. Even that keeper of faith and tradition, Pope John Paul II, finally succumbed and put a Christmas tree inside the Vatican in 1982.
So, let’s conclude by wishing
To the politically correct: Happy Holidays
To the sensitive Christians: Merry Christmas
To African-American Christians: Happy Kwanzaa
To the pagans: Happy Winter Solstice
To the secularists: Thanks for being a sport and helping with the lights.
And with some lateness:
To the Jews: Happy Hanukkah
To the Hindus: Happy Diwali
And to all a Happy and Healthy 2019
Let's Reason 
Great blog! Keep them coming. From your very proud vaftisimia! ❤
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