R ants

My grandfather was a cop in Youngstown, Ohio in the sixties. Worked the three-to-eleven shift. This gave him the opportunity to find all the great Christmas decorations at a time when the city was in its heyday. Steel was king, and Youngstown and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were the twin pillars of that kingdom.

Every year while on Christmas break, my brother and I got to spend the night at our grandparents, and the high point of the visit was a tour of the city to see the best Christmas lights. It was magic.

These days, the magic is sadly lacking, and it doesn't have anything to do with growing up or September 11 or anything like that.

It's the damned white lights!

A few years back, someone got the bright idea that nothing but white lights somehow epitomized the season better than the muticolored glories I remember from my childhood. For whatever reason, everyone jumped on the bandwagon.

I, unfortunately, didn't. The wonder which filled me at the sight of those huge, stately houses, many built from steel profits, festooned with big outdoor bulbs in red, green, blue, yellow, orange, and purple is almost indescribable. It defined Christmas. Nothing at any other time of the year looked like that. It screamed joyous, it shouted boldly to the world, "This is a time like no other." It transported me to a place the mundane world could never touch.

A house overwhelmed with white lights and those trendy white icicle lights does nothing for me. My Christmas memories are filled with color. When I see a single house among dozens done up in white lights with muticolored lights, a faint hint of the magic and wonder I remember from so long in the past wells up inside me.

A little color, if you don't mind. The white lights of today don't carry a message of the specialness of the season. They just make a light-polluted world a little brighter.

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