Joy of Christmas

In my neighborhood the harbinger of Christmas is the candelabra that appears in Bob and Doris Viviano’s kitchen window right after Halloween.

By Thanksgiving their house in the Forsythia Gate section of Levittown is decked with some 20,000 lights. The place glows like a happy liner on a dark sea.

I drive past the Viviano house frequently, since it is at the end of our street. As we slow for the stop sign, my children, who are 4, 5 and 7, are overcome with “wows.”

I hate this, because I know what’s coming.

“Dad,” my son Danny inevitably asks, “how come we can’t do this? How come we don’t have lights on our house?”

The others join him, bugging me.

I remind them that we used to hang lights of the icicle variety. (My wife insisted.) But two years ago, the stepladder shifted on soft ground and I went tumbling.

“You kids don’t want me to break an arm putting up Christmas lights, do you?”

Silence.

Last week, when they raised the issue again, I rolled out a fresh reason. Our house is fairly tall and I don’t like heights.

“But you flew airplanes — how can you be afraid?” Danny asked.

“I’m afraid of ladder heights, son, not airplane heights,” I said.

They persisted.

I said: “Children, we should remember to keep Christmas in our hearts. Who needs lights when we can glow with the reason for the season from within?”

Groans filled the minivan.

Somewhere along the wilderness trail of marriage and mortgages, of bill paying, child rearing, and lawn cutting, of T-ball, football, school meetings, work meetings, e-mail, snail mail and all the other treadmill stuff that take up my day, hanging Christmas lights lost its charm.

So why do folks like the Vivianos still do it, and so spectacularly?

“We had really good childhood Christmases,” Doris said. “We came from really good families, secure families. We find that when we look back and remember, Christmas and the lights was pure happiness. We want to bring it to other families.”

As I stood in front of their house the other night, a memory returned. I was about 5 and there was a family in my North Park neighborhood who decorated in similar style. They even had a loudspeaker from which Wayne Newton Christmas songs blared.

Standing in the darkness in the cold, holding my big sister’s hand, I was transfixed. Something big and exciting was on its way.

Last week, I walked my children to the Vivianos, who were nice enough to let us tour their display.

“Dad we should do this,” my son Jaime said, as he patted an illuminated reindeer head.

Before I could say anything he and my daughter Maria were pinballing through the yard, from a toy soldier, to a pair of Victorian carolers, to some candy canes, to a snowman.

“Don’t step on the Baby Jesus!” I yelled at them.

“Look at all the stars,” Danny said, pointing at the sky. He whooped his way over to a Santa Claus.

By mid-life, I suppose it is easy to forget what 20,000 colored lights pulling 100 amps at night can do for your spirits.

I took my camera and made movies of the children running, laughing, and touching everything.

If, by the time they reach the wilderness of the grownup world, and they have forgotten the magic of Christmas light and starlight and Santa, they’ll be able to see it in themselves as they were, long ago.

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