Sunday, December 23, 2007

Blue Balls, Madame Tinkertoy, and a Sprig of Holly

A house down the road from us has deep blue lights festooning its shrubberies, hanging from the eaves, and framing the windows. Their tree is white and covered with blue lights. It's a beautiful blue and the contrast is lovely but it's not Christmas-y. Blue is not a Christmas color. Blue lights are what mortuaries put on the tasteless white tree in the lobby: white tree, blue balls*, blue lights. Blue "Christmas" decorations bring me down. They make my heart heavy. Whenever I drive past this house, I don't want to look but I can't help it; it's like a train wreck with a blue bow, pretending to be merry. It's like a coffin with a sprig of holly.

I'm a child of the seventies, and "House of Blue Lights" has a rather different connotation for me. Hint: not Christmas. When I was in college, we were forbidden to put blue lights in our windows. It was considered advertising. And if you're going to advertise, you'd better have the merchandise handy when customers respond. Of course, some did; those homeschooled churchy sheltered girls down the hall, who'd never been allowed to go out anywhere on their own or with friends in their lives before, went hog-wild with the freedom they had never been taught to handle, got knocked up, and had to drop out before the first semester was over. They didn't even HAVE to advertise; the pheromones were so thick it made our homemade candles flicker funny. These girls were not typical, of course; they were just wild animals who suddenly had no harness. So to speak.

Ahem. Blue Christmas.

When I see all that blue, no amount of twinkle can make it seem holiday-like. It's just. . . sad. Blue is a sad color when it's not the sky or the sea or a robin's egg.

This is all merely my opinion, of course; if you wish to deck your halls with pink and turquoise plaid, or with John Deere tractors, or with taxidermied critter tails, by all means go for it.

I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to Christmas; I did create my own tradition with my tree, but I've stuck to it because for me, it was perfect. People with blue balls are of course free to create their own traditions, too.

I never wanted a tree that was nothing but an impersonal work of art; a Christmas tree should not appear untouched by human hands and have nothing to do with the people who put it up. A Christmas tree should be a reflection of the traditions and taste of the people involved. But blue? Sad. Gloomy. Mourning. Death. I'll have a blue Christmas without you. I'm blue, da ba dee da ba die. Am I blue? Song sung blue. Blue eyes crying in the rain. So now they paint themselves a sad song and color it blue. Please don't make me blue, sing me no sad songs. Sing me a song of sadness and sing it as blue as I feel. You're cloaked in red, I'm drenched in blue. You couldn't be a deeper shade of blue. That's as blue as the boy can be. Blue, blue, my love is blue. Don't it make my brown eyes blue. Etc. Blue is sad. Christmas is happy.

Or should be. I hope yours is. If I had a magic wand I would make it so for all of you. Whatever you do in December, may it shine with happy lights.


*Blue balls are not Christmas-y either. Why, what did you expect to find here?