ACROSS THE POND: How little girl won me round to festive lights’ extravaganza
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It’s no secret to those who know me well, that Christmas isn’t my favourite time of year. Maybe it’s the social anxiety, where at a party, you’ll most likely find me under the kitchen table patting the host’s dog instead of being sociable. Maybe it’s that nostalgic longing for something that no longer exists. Or maybe I’m just an old Scrooge.
Back home, whenever I walked past that lone house on the street that was all lit up with Santas and snowmen in the garden, I would chortle a little. It made me a bitty uncomfortable and I’m not sure why. I put it down to my overall dislike of Christmas. All the other houses had pretty trees displayed in their windows, but nothing outside. Perhaps it’s that Scottish thing about never drawing attention to yourself, under any circumstances.
This Scrooge-ness was confronted head-on when I first met my husband in Edinburgh.
“Computer Manny” who is originally from the USA, encountered some resistance when he wanted to deck out the windows of our flat in bright flashing fairy lights. “No way!” said I. But before long, Computer Manny wore me down and from then on, our flat could be seen from outer space, and I had a permanent blush on my face.
It wasn’t until we got to California that I understood where Computer Manny’s obsession with festive decorating came from. Come Halloween time, houses and gardens were kitted out with
miniature cemeteries, six-foot skeletons, spiders, fake webs, and orange and purple twinkling lights.
Christmas in the USA is like Halloween on steroids. Whole neighbourhoods coordinate their displays, like San Jose’s Willow Glen, which attracts enormous crowds from far and wide. Every year, a long line of cars crawl round the packed streets, taking in the stunning displays of lights.
Most are a warm white, which looks tasteful and each street has the same theme. One year there were eight huge reindeer, all lit up, stretching over several gardens and held together with rope lights for reigns. It was breathtaking.
Meanwhile, Computer Manny had big ideas for our own garden. Months in advance he started
planning. And the result was... let’s just say, you could read the Ross-Shire outside at night, the lights were that bright. One evening, I was putting out the bins for the scaffies, when I heard footsteps at the fence. I wondered if our dazzling display offended them, but when I looked over I saw a mum and a dad ith a little girl gazing at the lights with a huge smile on her face. She pointed at the candy canes and started jumping up and down and clapping her hands. It was then I understood. The joy that this little girl had, gave me joy. And it was sparked by something so simple as a candy cane and fairy lights. Every night, more and more kids walked past with their parents, smiling at our lights.
Americans love to celebrate. Much more than we tend to do in Scotland. Every year we get about a hundred kids at our door at Halloween, which makes the socially anxious Kerry wish I had a dog I could hide under the kitchen table with.
With everything that’s happening in the world right now, it doesn’t feel like a joyful place or a time to celebrate. But when I drive past houses with their Christmas displays, it brings a little bit of cheer and joy back into the world.
Kerry MacIver hails originally from the Black Isle and now lives in the San Francisco Bay area. She writes about being a Scot in the USA.
