As a kid, one of the thrills of Christmastime was the lights. I always wanted my parents to put lights on our house. They never did but like a lot of the houses in Gresham Park, our house had a big picture window in the front and that was where the Christmas tree sat. We also had the plastic candle lights with red, green or blue bulbs in them. My Christmas chores were to plug and unplug them, swap the colors out once a week, replace a bulb if it went out and keep fresh water in the tree stand.
I would stand for what seemed like hours looking at all the ornaments on the tree while listening to Christmas music on the stereo. They were the same ornaments year after year, but I was still mesmerized by them. We had four Christmas albums. They were The Ray Conniff Singers Christmas Album, Christmas With Chet Atkins, Elvis’s 1957 Christmas Album and Tennessee Ernie Ford’s The Star Carol album. For some reason, Ray Conniff and Chet Atkins are the ones I hear in my head when I think back to those times.
In the early Sixties in Gresham Park, they used to have a Turkey Shoot from before Thanksgiving through Christmas. It was in an empty lot on Gresham Road. That was back when there were empty lots on Gresham Road and there could be gunfire without the police getting involved. I remember riding by it and asking my father where the turkeys were. I thought turkeys wandered around in the lot and you would shoot one and take it home. He laughed and explained to me that you shot at targets and if you made a certain score, you won a frozen turkey.
At some point every Christmas, my parents and I would ride down to my cousins’ house in Forest Park. We would all pile into their Chevy Impala station wagon and ride around looking at Christmas lights. There was one house in particular that we kids always wanted to see. It was in one of the neighborhoods off of College Street, and this family went all out. The house was illuminated like the Griswold’s in Christmas Vacation. All the furniture was taken out of the living room and there was a life-sized animated Santa rocking in a chair and waving at the cars, which were lined up around the block. The owner would dress in a Santa suit and go from car to car, handing out candy to all the children. The city eventually stepped in and made them stop, due to the fact that the neighbors could not get in and out of their driveways because there was so much traffic night after night.
The Venable family in East Atlanta decorated their house in a similar fashion. Their house was located on Gresham Avenue at the corner of Lyndale Drive. Their house also had a life-sized animated Santa and every light and decoration you could imagine in the front yard. I remember leaving my grandparents’ house, riding by there and wondering why we couldn’t do the same thing at our house.
Christmas vacation at school was always the two weeks of Christmas and New Year’s. The Friday before the break started we would have a party in class and exchange Christmas cards. I was in love with Miss Pack, my third grade teacher and gave her a costume jewelry pin of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, which I had picked out myself at the gift shop in Gresham Plaza and paid for it with my own money. In the second grade, our class did a Christmas play at the PTA meeting. I was a reindeer, of course. I was always a reindeer, except for once at church when I was a donkey. Like Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie, there wasn’t a whole lot of acting there. All of us reindeer wore white shirts, clip-on black ties and at one point in the proceedings we each stepped out of line, moved to center stage and said the name of which reindeer we represented. I was Blitzen, the last in line. It went off without a hitch on PTA night and we were told to wear our white shirts and clip-on ties to school the next day because we were going to do the play for the rest of the first through third grade classes. Of course, I forgot and wore my regular school clothes the next day. “That’s okay,” said Mrs. Schell, my teacher. “You’re Rudolph.” The other reindeer all laughed and called me Rudolph. When my turn came to step out of line, step to center stage and say my name, I saw an opportunity and proudly shouted, “Rudolph!” It got a big laugh from the kids in the audience, but as soon as I left the stage, Mrs. Schell grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to the Principal’s office. I sat in the waiting area while she went into the office and shut the door. She was in there for a while, then came out and took me back to class. I don’t know what happened in the office or what was said. All I knew was that I wasn’t in trouble and that was all that mattered.
In high school, Towers High hosted a regional basketball tournament over the holidays called the Towers Christmas Tournament. It was a round-robin format and was a great place to take a date or go with a group of friends while school was out. At Walker, there was a semi-formal dance, the Holly Ball, which usually took place the first Saturday night of Christmas vacation.
We built our house in Ellenwood in ’84 and a few years later a group of us in the neighborhood decided to all put up lights. I was thrilled because I had always wanted lights on the house as a kid. I went to Michael’s and bought a bunch of strands of the retro-styled big exterior bulbs, all blue. I went out on Saturday morning and eagerly stapled up the strands along the eaves and the front porch posts and railings. That night I turned on the lights, put on Elvis’s Blue Christmas, poured myself an eggnog and reveled in the holiday spirit. I finally had Christmas lights on the house, all was festive and everything was right with the world.
That all ended in January. I had to go out on a freezing cold Saturday morning, climb the ladder, take out all the staples with a screwdriver, roll up the strands of lights, store them in boxes and take them to the basement while my wife and daughter sat in the living room in front of a warm fire. Ho, ho, ho indeed. I went from Santa to Scrooge in one afternoon. The lights only went up a couple of times after that before mysteriously disappearing in a yard sale.
Our house is now decorated for the season with a bevy of nutcrackers, angels, Santas, trees, a snow scene on the coffee table with VWs and our decorated tree in the den window downstairs. Outside is a different story. We have a wreath on the door and that is it. Not because I am a Grinch, it’s just that over the years I have come to prefer a quiet understatement when it comes to exterior decorations. No lights, no oversized inflatable yard characters and no clean up on a freezing Saturday in January. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!