Recommended for libraries serving a trendy population.

I grew up in a family, in a place, where it was a viable outing to get in the car and drive around and look at xmas light displays. Now I have the pleasure of walking around and doing the same. There is one house in my neighborhood that is extravagant in its display, and I'm not speaking in hyperbole here -- on any given night, families and couples are lined up on the sidewalk staring, pointing, taking pictures, before getting back into their car and driving to the other parts of town where they live. Tonight I walked by when I was out getting air, and I noticed they added a light-up ferris wheel that has dolls and stuffed animals going for a ride that last hours and hours and hours. It seems mean to have them permanently stuck on the ride. I guess no worse that imaginary angels permanently posed with trumpets on the roof.

I have a string of lights in my office. They are multi-colored and strewn loosely against the shape of the window frame, and many an evening I can be found stretched out on the couch staring at them, listening to Betty Carter or Lester Young or Joe Henderson or Mahler. (Lately I listen more to music without words.) They look beautiful against my red walls, my heart just relaxes and warms while I lie there and daydream or eveningdream or whatever. It is just like in my house where I grew up and I would sit every night alone in the living room and stare at the christmas tree lit up and decorated. I hated having to turn it off at night, I wanted to leave it on all day and night. I would try to go to upstairs to bed before my mother so I wouldn't have to be the one to flip the switch. I still find myself inclined to leave these office lights on all the time, but DYA usually unplugs them after brushing her teeth.

We have another string of white lights in the living room, the more tasteful version of holiday lights I suppose, and we have an agreement that they can stay up through the winter because of the lack of sunshine and daylight savings. I reluctantly agreed. As much as I adore them for the 6-plus weeks of the holidays, after a certain day in January, I think they should be removed. A sign of forgotten tasks on to-do lists, of holding on too long to hopes and expectations, of not appreciating certain joys only happening occasionally, of laziness and impropriety. But also, they become gauche -- reminiscent of decorations in college dorm rooms. The problem is, as dim lighting solutions for dark winter days, I can't deny that they are highly useful. (Hence me agreeing to leaving them up well past the twelve days of xmas.) I should investigate perhaps a more permanent version of this lighting solution that doesn't come on green strands that I staple-gun into the wall.