I miss tacky lights. I miss them a lot. Oh sure, the English do a wonderful Dickens Christmas with costumed carol singers and candle light and ribboned horse carriages. And it is beautiful. The Victorian age is so completely identified with Christmas here that our local paper admonished shopkeepers for not getting into the spirit enough for our celebrations. Apparently there simply were not enough minced pie and mulled cider offerings by velvet cloaked greeters to suit. But I digress. It is the lights I miss the most in this Christmas Carol theme-park-land I find myself.
Every historian and Victorian factoid expert is now shouting at the screen that they would not have had twinkling fairy lights or those giant multi-coloured bulbs synchronised to Rocking Around the Christmas Tree in Dickens day. Duh. But there was plenty of horse excrement and a complete absence of adequate sanitary drainage too. I don't see anyone peddling Eau de Victorian Poo for a realistic Dickens experience. I really don't think anyone would be so horrified if one or two strands of lights shared the spotlight this year.
Where are the gigundo inflatable snow people and Santas? I have not seen a single one. There are lots of gas lit lamp posts and enough dried orange slice garlands to permanently eradicate scurvy, but not a single smiling penguin or candy cane puffed up and blown out for all to enjoy. Not one. Sigh. Again the historic chorus is no doubt shaking their collective heads in absolute horror at my wanting to modernise these ancient of traditions, but I say if authentic is what we are after, then pass the flour soup and the calf's head jelly. Yum.
When we were children, we would all pile into our family station wagon and drive around to look at Christmas lights. This was many years before computers would forever change the Christmas lighted landscape with synchronised and choreographed movements to piped in music, but the displays were still gloriously opulent in their tackiness. You would have enormous plastic angel choirs lit up in gold and white singing to the newborn Christ in a softly lit manger surrounded by Santa, elves, reindeer and other miscellaneous Christmas characters. Rudolph was a big draw in my youth. His glowing red nose helped guide throngs of Christmas light seekers to the best displays.
Every year on the home planet Christmas light displays get more and more intricate. Folks take months to assemble their masterpieces of consumer excess. Laser light shows sponsored by local municipalities now compete with the home-grown extravaganzas. Every year neighbours complain about the noise, and the lights and the crowds. Every year we would seek out the best of the worst and giggle with delight and a wee bit of disbelief.
Those hysterical historians probably stopped reading this drivel and left in disgust some time ago. Surely I must be kidding if I choose blinking neon coloured bulbs flashing in time with Alvin and the Chipmunks over yet another minced pie, mulled wine and a few white single bulb lights. I feel a bit like Charlie Brown when he is given the daunting task of picking out a tree and is faced with pink and blue and white aluminium trees with silver tinsel and large blinking lights. It is intoxicating. And yet, once the novelty of the bright and garish wears off, we are left yearning for the simple; the unadorned.
Maybe that is why a Dickens Christmas is so appealing. It takes us back to a simpler time where family and food and celebration were key. We don't have to remember the foul odours and the lack of sanitation. We don't have to focus on the absolute poverty and pervasive disease and neglect of children. We see what we want to see. We see the velvet skirted, top-hatted, mulled wine sipping folks of England's version of our own Norman Rockwell.
I will miss the tacky lights and the inflatables this year. I will eat one too many minced pies. I will be caught up in England's post card version of Christmas in the way my home planet identifies with Coca-Cola's Santa. And next year, after my neighbours have gotten to know me a bit better, I might just put out my own blinking light display.
We STILL ride around to look at Christmas lights - our favorites are the really super awful ones. I love a good mixture of constant on/ blinking/ chaser, all-white/multicolored lights at the same house, or a house where all the window candles are white except for one blue or red bulb somewhere, generally in a surly teenager's room, I imagine. And the more giant inflatables on a lawn, the better, in my book! Luckily you will be back on the 26th and can get your fill of horrible decorations. What about those things that get projected on the sides of the house, like from a giant overhead projector? I can't get enough of those.
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