#34

Christmas at Clearlake

The County of Lake, California, is an interesting and peculiar place, a place of great beauty but also a place of deep avarice, a place with a wide spiritual dimension but with it a sense of narrow vision. You can find all the kinds of humans here, if you look, and you can find a good many animals as well: which, as I grow older, seems a better recommendation.

The City of Clearlake is looked down upon by the City of Lakeport. Lakeport is newer, shinier, cleaner, and has a richer populace: this notwithstanding,, it also has a fine selection of Victorian homes, many in an excellent state of preservation, cared for by inhabitants who love them and who have the money to take care of them. It was in Lakeport that Lily Langtry got her divorce!

The City of Clearlake is presumed to be the dumping place of California's derelict drug users, and that is simply not true. There are druggies mixed in with the poor people, but I suspect there are just as many mixed in with the rich: they cover it better, that's all.

Christmas in the County of Lake is a time of Commerce, just as in the rest of America. The Christmas spirit (outside of specific times and places in specific churches or other charitable institutions) is manifested in colored lights and sales sheets, in profit tallies and purchase reports.

As in the rest of America, people do not ask: "What did you give?" they ask: "What did you get?"

But for all my cynicism about what Mark Twain called "The Damned Human Race," there still shines through, as my other hero, Charles Dickens, so aptly point out, a special something at this season, and when it shines from the environs of the poor it seems to shine all the brighter.

This year in the City of Clearlake there was a positively stunning Christmas light display. It was not complex, it was not expensive looking, but it was more beautiful than any other I saw in my travels. It showed what wonder can be made with simple materials and attention to detail, what one can do if one has spirit and is willing to put in the work.

It was a blue forest.

We've all see trees lit up with little white lights, the legacy of decades of Disney esthetics (with which I find no great fault), but this was different. Someone had gone to the great trouble of winding and wrapping a grove of trees with tiny, dark blue lights, and they were not very small trees at that. Their shapes in the darkness gave the impression of walnut trees, or perhaps planarded sycamores. Given the County's history of agriculture, I'd bet on the walnut trees. They are leafless at this time of year, and I have not been back in daylight to check the species.

Let me emphasize that they were not lighted with the haphazard lazidazical manner one usually sees these days. The lights were evenly spaced and placed, and showed one the true shapes of the trees, except that one was seeing them as blue lights. Thickly covered they were, and pretty much up to the top.

A mysterious, mystical, beautiful blue forest of light.

I commended it to everyone throughout the whole of the time that it was on display, and should the person or persons who accomplished this wonderful confection stumble across this humble tribute, let him, her, them at least take my compliments and admiration.

Not far away, perhaps a couple of miles, there was another display, near the trailer park where my son and his wife and children live. I could not fully see it because it was up several blocks from the exit which I drove, but the top of it was quite prominent. It looked a great deal like the lights that used to be run between the smokestacks of steamships in the old days. White lights representing the gaiety of cruise ship people decked in diamonds dancing the fox trot or, at this season perhaps, the turkey trot. Maybe even, if they were of a sufficiently romantic nature, a tango.

This set in play the eternal inner dialogue which it is the nature of the writer to host constantly, a what if, and a perhaps sort of dialogue, an imaginary dialogue between imaginary people, which is the bedrock of the scene, the narrative, and of characterization. I began to consider just how such a display had come to pass, and before mine inner eyes appeared the Christmas Lighting Pageant by which the thing had been decided upon and achieved.

***

"All right,, everybody," said Mrs. Shaugnessy, "everybody has coffee who can drink coffee, everybody has a beer who wants it, and everybody has some of the Kosher cookies Mrs. Schultz was nice enough to bake for tonight. Everybody looks comfortable, so let's get this show on the road! I hereby call to order the first and only meeting of the Noble Street Committee for the Decoration of the Neighborhood at Mid Winter. --Is it ok to call us that?"

There was a general assent, as the denomination of the season as Mid Winter did not manage to offend any of the divers belief groups represented in what was, even for California, a pretty diverse neighborhood.

"Well, good! I guess the first order of business then, for the new families, is to explain why we are having this meeting."

She took a deep breath.

"We all like to do some kind of display at this time of year. It's traditional! But this is America in the Twenty First Century, and the fact is, none of us is rich enough to do the kind of display we would like to do. Moreover, towards the end, it got too competitive! Everybody tried to out-light everybody else and, that one year, the transformers caught fire and the whole neighborhood was in the dark for three days at the height of the holidays."

Mrs. Shaugnessy was very proud of herself in avoiding, most scrupulously, the 'C' word.

"Across town there was an old couple that had spent years and years collecting plastic lighted statues and such, but on Social Security they couldn't afford the electricity to power it. For a while, neighbors chipped in, and I think the city even made a contribution for a while. But in the end that, too, faded. That's why our street formed a committee to do one, big, light display for the holidays. Each year it's in a different yard, at a different house, and we all come together to decide what the theme will be. Then we all help put it up, and we all help pay the electric bill. We think we do the best show in town, and, also needless to say, we work hard to make it something that represents all the religious groups represented on our street, and to be sure it cheers everyone and offends nobody's beliefs."

There was a murmur of approval around the room and people munched and sipped. Mr. al-Khazaali tasted the cookie that Mrs. Schultz had made and gave her a shy smile of approval. Mrs. Schultz blushed.

"I think it safe to say," said Mrs. Shaugnessy, "that a Nativity scene is not on the agenda."

There was a somewhat louder murmur of approval, though there was also a rather sad exhalation from the Washingtons, where were African American and Baptists. They had left Arkansas when their house was burned down by the Ku Klux Klan, back in the first days of the Civil Rights Movement, and they had good reason to appreciate the peculiar and welcoming ways of California, even if it meant leaving the Christ out of Christmas.

"I thought," offered Mr. MacTavish, who was a Presbyterian, "that perhaps we could do the Golden Gate Bridge and a history of the Gold Rush. They have those lovely gold colored lights now for the tree, and it would be warm and friendly, you know, like the song: 'Open your Golden Gate,, you make no stranger wait..."

His voice died out at the obvious displeasure being displayed my Mr. and Mrs. Wingfeather.

"The Gold Rush brought unspeakable horrors to all the tribes of California," said Mrs. Wingfeather, with great and restrained dignity.

"Our people were hunted like animals by the Mountain Men who came down from Oregon to steal our lands, while others were taking the gold," said Mr. Wingfeather. "Many bands were wiped out completely, with no compassion at all. It was genocide."

"We certainly should not do a display that condones genocide," said Mr. Schultz, firmly.

"No, of course not," said Mrs. Shaugnessy.

Everyone looked at Mr. MacTavish as if he were wearing a swastika on his arm.

"Perhaps," said the elderly Mrs. Washington brightly, "we could make a display of the rising sun! It doesn't mean for other people what its does for Baptists, and its pretty universal as a symbol for hope!"

That brought a round of smiles, but then the venerable Mrs. Takashi, who was perhaps the oldest person in the room, spoke up with quiet modesty.

"It would, of course, be very beautiful and hopeful. But some people might see it as the symbol of Japan, and here, where there are many old and retired people, it might kindle unpleasant memories."

Mrs. Takashi had phrased what she said with the utmost care and politeness, so it was a matter of some ambiguity whether the unpleasant memories might be of World War Two, or of the interment camps which she and many other Japanese Americans had endured in that ugly time when concentrations camps had been the fashion on both sides of the conflict.

"Maybe," said Mr. Shaugnessy, speaking up for the first time, "we could do children's stories. I remember when I was a boy, back before everybody got so concern with guarding the trademarks, that there used to be Disney displays in all the department store windows. Animated figures doing fanciful things to make the children laugh. I remember one window had the big bad wolf and the three little pigs...."

"No pigs!"

He was cut off mid sentence by the combined voices of the Schultzes and the al-Khazaalis, who looked at each other in surprise to have spoken as one; and then firm agreement, and then some uneasy pleasure.

"How about an electric bonfire!" said Starberry Wintergreen," who as NeoPagan, and who, once she had explained in detail to the whole neighborhood (many times) what witches really do, had been regarded as safe and lovable, if somewhat flaky, and a reasonable source of advice on home remedies.

"Huh?" came the general response.

"Well, you know," she said, "the bonfire around which we dance at the solstice to see us through the longest night of the year... Well, I mean, most of you don't dance naked around a bonfire at the Winter Solstice, but lots of people celebrate with a big fire...."

"I think it might confuse people," suggested Mr. MacTavish.

"And worse," said Endora Ironwill, who was the other witch on the street, but of the Dianic sect, "it would look like we were celebrating the Burning Times, and the burning alive of millions of innocent women!"

Endora Ironwill had the singular capacity to throw cold water on almost any endeavor, but she was a lawyer and had stood up for the neighborhood on any number of occasions when it was threatened by city or county government. She wasn't much fun to be around, but she was very highly respected, which everyone thought she preferred.

"Flowers!" suggested Linda Greenway, who knew more ways to cook spinach than anybody could imagine. She was a strict Vegan. "We could make big, lighted flowers!"

That idea enjoyed some discussion until it was realized that flowers would be very much out of season, unless they were poinsettas, and that to render them would require the purchase of many more lights than they could afford.

"Gift packages!" Mr. MacTavish tried again.

"Isn't the season already over-commercialized?" asked Starberry Wintergreen. "Wouldn't that make us look just like one of the big stores? Wouldn't that be caving in to greed?"

And so it went. Themes were suggested, themes were rejected.

Mrs. Gonzales offered to make Mexican chocolate, a safer bet than her offer of tacos in the previous year, which had been rejected because they contained lard. Mrs. al-Khazaali surprised everyone with boxes of imported rathlacoum (which, she explained, was popularly called 'Turkish Delight' in the West), and it was a big hit until it was noted, by Endora Ironwill, that the candy contained pistachios, and that she was allergic to nuts: an allergy which Mr. MacTavish shared.

Fortunately, neither of them went into seizures.

By midnight brains were exhausted and nerves were frayed. The older members of the committee were beginning to yawn and stretch in their seats: all except Mrs. Takashi, who was much too graceful and polite to consider such antics. It was beginning to look as if there would have to be a second meeting, a prospect of infinite dread.

Then Dolly Varden, who had said not a word but who had eaten a great many cookies and drunk an awful lot of coffee, spoke up.

Dolly was young, plump, and pretty. Nobody knew how she supported herself, but the popular supposition as to the matter was not borne out because she never seemed to have any gentlemen callers. She was likable, but nobody in the neighborhood accounted her as having anything between her ears but possibly cotton candy. It was thus quite a surprise that her suggestion of a theme was, at that late hour and under those circumstances, so roundly embraced by everyone in the room.

Two neighbors whose yards adjoined each had a tall flagpole, which made it all possible. Bright white lights were strung between them, then stretched down to either side, giving that elegant impression of a fabulous cruise ship crossing the ocean under the bright stars of winter: which was, of course, a bit out of season, but everybody was willing to ignore that for the sake of the historic recreation of the event.

And thus it was, thanks to Dolly, that the Noble Street Committee for the Decoration of the Neighborhood at Mid Winter presented its glorious light display for the year:

"The Sinking of the Titanic"

--And the band played on....

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