December is always a good time to think fondly of one's childhood, of more innocent times, full of wonder and joy. It's also a handy time to remember awkward phases of growth, emotional ones as much as physical. When I reminisce about holidays of my youth, I go to the late 1970s, maybe as recent as the very early 1980s, most often. This year I chose to think with chagrin about what an asshole I was as a young teenager about the Christmas lights we used to put up, and for once I was honest enough with myself and my mother to admit that I actually liked the thing I used to complain about so vociferously. At least I do now. We had a few strands of those big fat bulbs for outdoors, and my stepdad would hang them in a tight line across the gutter edge of our L-shaped porch. There was something about that rigid line and the warmth of the colors of those enormous incandescent bulbs that made me deride it as resembling a taco stand. (Told you I was a jerk. Thankfully I have evolved.) It was a running joke we had for years, me being embarrassed that our lights were so simple, where other people were putting up stars or Santas or whatever it was that I thought we should have been able to have too. Over the last five or six years, as everyone converted their entire light displays to LED, the colors changed dramatically. They became sharper and colder. At first, I loved it, especially the blues. But lately I started to miss the warmth of the incandescent glass bulbs. I wanted to recapture the vibe of the 60s and 70s, probably because I was so nostalgic for my early childhood. Two of our outside C-9 strands burned out last year, and I decided it was time to buy new ones when I found them for 10 bucks at Costco. I bought 3 boxes, so that they would match all the way around the front. I was pleased to discover when I opened them that although they were LED, the colors were warm like those old bulbs. The plastic of them even clinked like glass. The Mr hung them up in a straight line around the edge of the roof (although draped, not pulled tight), and my mother said to me, "I never thought I'd see the taco stand lights on your house!" We laughed, but it's true. I really do think back on them fondly. A couple blocks from my house is an actual taco stand (which is apparently very good, because there is always a crowd around it on warm nights, every day of the week. I need to try it, once I am feeling brave about potential gluten cross-contamination at a new place.) I took a photo of it for my mother. It had a single strand of warm colored fat bulbs across it. And I'm not going to lie, I liked it.
When we used to all gather at one of the houses of my dad's family for Christmas, we cousins would inevitably get restless on Christmas Eve or the night of the 25th and take off together. I think it was the year I was 10 that we all piled in a car with my oldest cousin behind the wheel, to go driving around Oklahoma City looking at Christmas lights, and probably trying to buy something or find an open movie theater. I remember it being cold and super foggy. We were stopped in a parking lot somewhere, and I was shivering in the back seat because the heater just didn't reach the back as well as the front. The song "Heaven on the Seventh Floor" came on the radio, and I piped up and asked for one of the big kids up front to turn it up louder. It was a syrupy disco pop song through and through, and my cousin, who was seven or eight years older than I, looked down his nose at me and said, "Why? Are you some kind of Paul Nicholas fan?" I shrank down into myself and mumbled something incoherent, giving up my request. By then I'd already started to figure out that this guy was indeed one of the biggest celebrity crushes of my entire young life, but I wasn't about to admit that in a car full of cousins who were considerably cooler than I was.
For the entirety of December thus far, and for most of November, it has been unseasonably warm. This feels very wrong. I've talked about how we had irises and hyacinths blooming in November. Today we had to water the grass because it has been so warm and dry. Yesterday I was walking around the back yard barefoot, in a swimsuit, letting the dogs go lie down on their beds in the garage before I crawled in the hot tub. It has been jarring to be so comfortable outside in December in so little clothing. I want snow. I want the foggy cold from that Oklahoma City night. The forecast here is for weather that is entirely spring-like. There is finally a chance of snow in the near future, the weekend before Christmas. It's still not going to be super cold, but maybe it will get us all in the right mood. I need it. Until then, I'll just live in holidays past in my mind. Maybe I can talk to that ill-adjusted kid and straighten out her priorities while I'm there.
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