The sun is down by the time I make it home from the office these days. Only the glow in the west is left when I crank up the car. But the holiday season has come to Chatham County, evidenced by the changing musical format on my car radio and the decorations I see planted in so many front yards. These two together make for one merry drive after five.
Yes, Christmas time is here. The traditionalists celebrate these blessed days with garlands and ribbons and oversized bows to accent rails and fences and porch posts. Evergreen wreaths grace doors and mailboxes. Cloth flags with snowflakes wave welcome to winter. I saw a house with red and white ceramic roosters flanking the steps; upon closer inspection, the chickens proved to be wearing handmade Santa suits with matching hats. The attention to detail was exquisite.
Only after the sun goes down and the lights come up will you see the other show. Even the plainest mobile home looks as inviting and warm as a resort lodge when festooned with Christmas lights. The world is made magic by the flip of a switch: better living though electricity.
Every night inflatable lawn decorations spring up from the earth, their LEDs glowing and flickering and blinking and occasionally blinding. On the way home I look at Santas and reindeer and nutcrackers and penguins and elves and candy canes and snowmen wearing top hats and scarves. I saw a snow globe as tall as a man with a revolving little Swiss town inside it. I saw a unicorn as big as a pony. I have no idea when we crossed over from holiday decorations to pop culture kitsch, but when I see an inflatable octopus holding a tang fish in a jar I wonder what the movie “Finding Dory” has to do with Christmas. Not to suggest that smiling dragons with little wings are demonic, or that Minions as tall as my porch roof are inappropriate; I think it remarkable we can take something as ordinary as a red stocking hat, put it on anything and transform it into a Christmas decoration. Snoopy driving a Zamboni borders on the sublime if you ask me. And let’s hear it for the Santa wearing desert camo.
I imagine all these air-filled decorations forming armies in the wee hours of the night, as in the Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and laying siege to each other while we all are asleep. On our morning walk my dog and I see piles of fabric everywhere, as if some great inflatable battle happened and then moved on, leaving only the fallen heaped together on the ground, each pile of synthetic cloth dyed in bright primary colors: the uniforms of Christmas. Magically at dusk they arise again like rayon mushrooms, their repeating soundtracks playing carols found in the public domain, like “Jingle Bells” or “Deck the Halls” or “Silent Night.” Casio tones never sounded so sweet.
For most of us, Jesus is the reason for the season, but I am waiting patiently to see that inflatable, lighted menorah as big as Montana. I know it has to be out there, just as surely as Adam Sandler wrote the “The Chanukah Song.”
But I discovered for myself that religious fervor is not always the reason for the seasonal decorations. People have their own holiday logic; one of my co-workers asked to swap secret Santa gifts with me at last year’s Christmas office party. His gift was a box of selected hot sauces. Mine was a 6-foot inflatable lighted snowman. I agreed, knowing my wife would probably enjoy the selection. She puts that stuff on everything.
“Where are you going to put Frosty, here?” I asked, knowing he had a small front yard. “You’ll have to use a heavy duty cord to power it up, but it comes with stakes and lines to tie it down against the wind.”
“Oh, no, he’s going on my front porch.”
I had never imagined the snowman on a porch, front or back. All my co-worker would have to do is plug it into the wall socket and walk away. This was thinking outside the box.
“Good idea,” I admitted in admiration. “You won’t have to worry about the weather.”
“Oh, no, it’s not about the weather,” he said as if it had never occurred to him. “I’m putting him on the porch to tick off the neighbor across the street. If I put it on the porch instead of in the front yard, she’ll have to look at it all night through her front windows.” Then he took a deep breath, smiled and said more softly, “She’s hated us since we moved in a year ago, I’m gonna sooo enjoy this.”
I am happy to report my co-worker does not live in Chatham County.
Merry Christmas!
Dwayne Walls Jr., a contributor to the News + Record, has previously written a story about his late father’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease and a first-person recollection of 9/11 for the newspaper. He and his wife Elizabeth live in Pittsboro.