My block’s friendly war of the Christmas lights, and the lovely meaning of it all

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Thousands of lights adorn Chicago’s official Christmas tree in Millennium Park. | Victor Hilitski/For the Sun-Times

Three radiant white reindeer plus a giant glowing black Santa… “Yeah, that’ll get ‘em,” I say, plotting my full Christmas lights attack. “I’m coming hard this year, going for the jugular…”

My wife laughs. I can read her mind: “Men…”

Nope, war.

Except there are no real enemies in this war. It’s a friendly unspoken rivalry between my south suburban neighbors, begun with a peek and a nod and the opening shot.

OPINION

A good brother down the street always draws first blood. Each year, I see him working all incognito (it seems to me), getting an early start, laying the finishing touches while the rest of us (speaking mainly for myself here) recover from stuffing ourselves.

In my reconnaissance, I spy my neighbor planting his lights by day, trimming his bushes and trees. With pastoral-like care, he adorns his front lawn with reindeer and assorted accoutrements.

Then suddenly, one night after Thanksgiving, he illuminates the block in twinkling meteoric light. His gutters drip with white sparkling icicle splendor, shaming us — at least some of us — into stringing together our own Christmas creations.

Apparently we have official holiday light judges who troll the neighborhood each year covertly (I have never knowingly seen one). Without speaking, apparently in the middle of the night, they inconspicuously plant the top award certificate on the lawn of recipients. I — I mean we — won one year.

That year, I lit all the bushes and enlisted my landscaper, who climbed our statuesque evergreen and strung white lights up to its roughly 20-something-foot peak. Man, you turn the corner onto our block, from either end, it was like the North Star or an angel had descended from heaven. It was like ComEd had infused the tree with special glow juice. It was like the spirit of Christmas kissed it and ignited it with glory…

Yeah, I got ‘em that year.

My competitive juices ebb and flow. Some years I’ve thought to myself: “Do you really want to pay the electric bill for burning all those lights for a few weeks?”

Sometimes I’ve been sobered from my holiday light inebriation by the brittle cold and the brutal wind that beckons, “Come on out here if you want to, homeboy… I’ve got something for you: frostbite.”

And yet, sometimes I have braved the cold anyway, warmed by the process alone, which ushers in, for me, the spirit of the season and unearths buried memories.

Sometimes the cold on the inside has suppressed my will. And I have been unable to descend into our basement and retrieve the bins of lights, unable to lift even a finger — bitter, angry and lost somewhere between the ghosts of Christmas Past and life and death.

Frozen by the arrival of what is supposed to be the warmest, most delightful time of year and having to live it without the mortal presence of someone who now only lives in my heart. Overcome by sweet memories of someone who now eternally sleeps, buried near two sprawling evergreens.

I miss you, Mama.

I am thankful for light.

Light. … It has illuminated my path back to Christmas. Led me back from the darkness.

It has re-lit memories of Mama’s girlish laughter at Christmastime. Retouched the faded picture in my mind of the delight in Mama’s eyes as her grandchildren unwrapped the mound of gifts beneath the tree and wrestled for candy canes, and we lived, laughed and loved on the wind of our time.

I hang the lights with tears in my eyes — the holiday war with my neighbors, perhaps existing only in my mind. But in the lights, joy I find.

Email: Author@johnwfounatin.com

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.

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