A Walker in the Suburbs

The luminaries were our neighbor’s idea, and I’m afraid we weren’t very happy about them at first. Saving plastic milk jugs, sawing their tops off, adding a layer of kitty litter and a candle — just more items on an endless to-do list. 

But we saved a few containers, our neighbor filled in with paper bags, and on Christmas Eve our suburban street was transformed.

It wasn’t just the way the lighted path shone in the dark. Or how the candles stayed lit through the drizzle and fog. It was how neighbors poured out of their houses, strolled along with hot toddies, chatted as if in a long June twilight. Someone played carols through outside speakers. Kids ran  around.

It was unexpected. It was magical.

Distance, illness and weather kept us from gathering this holiday as we usually do. But eventually, the east coast contingent of my family came together for presents, food, conversation and controlled chaos. We solved a few world problems — though gun violence and climate change continue to elude us — and had some laughs, too.

Now we’re back home watching the snow fall. No walking in the suburbs today.

It’s time to stay inside, read and make soup.

Last night we put up the tree. We’ve inherited two blue chairs since last year, so we had to move those to make room. The plug we usually use for lights hasn’t worked in months, so we jerry-rigged extension cords for illumination.

And then there’s the tree itself, which looks like someone took a big bite out of the top. There isn’t enough corner to hide its deficiencies.

In other words, it wasn’t our typical tree. And it wasn’t our typical tree-decorating fest. We weren’t all present, and afterwards we sat outside around the fire pit and looked at the stars.

But there was plenty of talking and laughing. Families change; traditions can, too.

This year’s tree doesn’t look like this!

As our part of earth tilts farther from the sun, as days shorten and gray, as night swallows our lives  — there’s a good chance we won’t notice.

We’re too distracted standing in line at the post office, searching for ornaments in the dank storage area of the basement, finding if not the perfect tree then at least one with flaws that can be successfully hidden by strategic placement in the corner.

Did the ancients have this idea when they celebrated solstice or whatever holiday we purloined for Christmas? Were these feasts only to appease the gods or shout hooray? Or were our ancestors saying to themselves, yeah, looks like the world’s gonna end any day now, but I have this goat to slaughter and these wild herbs, they might freshen it up a bit, and it seems a shame to let it go to waste…

Because distraction, I think, is one of the surest bets of all. Distraction itself is worth celebrating.

I do most of my shopping in a two- to three-week period in December — not a perfect system, but it works. In order to buy lots of gifts in such a short time, however, I’ve had to head out after dinner — when I’d typically be curling up with a book or a movie — onto the cold, dark highways of suburbia, pulling in and out of massive parking lots, threading my way past holiday displays and shelves of sweaters in search of the right gift for each person on the list.

The other night, looking in vain for help in a large sporting goods store (what is a lure? and how do you tell one from the other?) I found myself in the one section of the establishment that was bustling, the one section where you could find clerks. That would be the gun department.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many guns in one place before. There were camo models and long sleek menacing ones and short, stubby almost cute ones. People were milling around cases, speaking animatedly to staff, pawing through boxes of ammunition.

I told myself that guns must be a big seller around the holidays, that these guns are for hunters. Put out of my mind the frightening alternatives.

Still, it was hard to forget that in this entire cavernous store the only place where there was life and activity and conversation, the only place that was lively … was where the guns were sold.

Some houses have candles in their windows. Others, tasteful white twinkle lights around trees limbs and branches. There are spotlit doors with wreaths. And there are icicle lights, easiest to install if you have a slight overhang, which we do not.

A few years ago people started putting not just one large wreath on the front door, but smaller wreaths on every front-facing window, a holiday-decorating escalation that seems like it would be overkill but can look surprisingly nice when glimpsed from afar.

The house behind us drips in icicle lights and spotlit trees, and the house behind that features a snowman and reindeer and strings of lights shining from tree to tree, giving the place a fiesta feel.

Our own house has colored lights along the roof line, around the door, across the shrubbery and up the lamp post. The window candles are missing in action but should be up soon.

We are, in short, decked out for the season. At least we are until I plug in my hair dryer and blow the fuses (which has been happening far too often lately). But except for these black-outs, our house and the others in Folkstone have become what we need most right now: candles in the darkness.  

Photo of Bull Run Lights Festival: Virginia.org