This is a post from Journals-L, so if you've ended up here from there, pass on.

If you're not from Journals-L, then this was written in response to the question "what's your favorite holiday, and why?"

I love Christmas because I LOVE Christmas lights, even the tacky, overdone ones. I put mine up early, and I leave them up long after The Day is over. We few, we depressed few up here in Darkland need the cheery lights kept up for a long time, in order to help us get through the long winters (Austingirl's a Bostongirl at the moment.)

Christmas in Austin is a fun thing. They make this giant tree out of very long strings of light, strung up to a very tall light pole in Zilker Park, and then light a Yule log near by, and keep it burning throughout the season, if you can imagine needing a fire at Christmas in Austin. It's a Christmas tradition to go stand underneath the middle of the "tree" and spin around while looking up at the lights, so that you get dizzy and then stumble around and throw up. I don't think I've ever thrown up, myself, at least not so's I'd remember!

They also have some cool light displays in the rest of the park, though when I was there last at Christmas several years ago, that had become too
commercial in my opinion. Local businesses now "sponsor" the displays, putting their business logos on some of the displays, and kind of taking some of the Christmas spirit out of it.

Part of the fun of seeing those displays, though, was making sure to take some of your favorite "Christmas cheer" along with you in the car when going to view them. You'd have to sit in the car, in a long line, idling for hours, in order to drive through the park to see the display, and by the time you got up to your turn, everything looked GREAT, great, I tell you! ;-)

There's also this cool street in town, I can't remember the name right now, just north of the UT campus, where the entire street decorates in really
interesting, really funky and cool ways, even to the point of covering their cars with lights and decorations, and crossing the streets overhead with their light displays. There used to be this one guy who decorated his house by stapling entire cartons of lights still in their plastic sleeves over the whole house. Sounds weird, but it looked great. You had to follow the lights around to the backyard to see the rest of his display.

Man, can you tell I'm missing Austin a LOT this morning, or what?

I love the spirit of Christmas, though I think it's pretty much been lost in the buy, buy, buy thing. That said, I like selecting and giving a gift I hope the person will like. And getting good stuff ain't so bad, either. ;-)
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© 2003 m. lucas