DECK THE CITY HALLS

New Yorkers are slowly bouncing back, just in time for the holiday season.  Either that or we are indulging in what my mother back in Michigan calls “shopping therapy.”  This practice involves stuffing your feelings by spending exorbitant amounts of money in the vain attempt to make yourself feel better, or at least as a means of escape.

Let’s say we are bouncing back.  I am not even talking about the snaking lines at Bensonhurst’s Joyce Leslie or New York & Co.   I am referring to the holiday displays I already see decking the City’s halls, malls, token booths and avenues.

Although I sensed Santa peeking his bearded head from a cardboard box being unpacked in the neighborhood Genovese as early as July, it wasn’t until the last week in November that I saw real evidence that the holiday season has hit.  Hard evidence.   Blazing evidence you could not miss from five blocks away, even if you tried.  Evidence as substantial as the Great Wall of China that was most likely equally as visible from outer space.

It was a house -- more like a mansion -- on 14th Avenue in Dyker Heights that had the largest, most intense holiday display of lights I have seen save for that tree at Rockefeller Center or at Bronner’s, the end-all (and world’s largest) Christmas display shop in Michigan’s town of Frankenmuth where my mother shops for her yearly-erected holiday village. 

This house in Brooklyn was draped, scraped, wound and bound in twinkling lights of crimson, hunter, yellow and gold.   Banners in front scream holiday greetings in several languages.  Giant stars dapple the siding.  Windows are lined with rims of glimmer.  Not just the front of the house is bedecked, either.  The sides, back and surely the attic rafters all share equal time and decoration.

Mind you, this is written at the beginning of the decorating season.  Give it another week and there will soon be a whole smattering of houses afire with electric splendor and this singular example may in fact begin to pale.

No, it won’t.  For several reasons.  I needed it that night.  It was an exhausting Tuesday and sometimes those can be the worst.  We are all used to exhausting Fridays since it is the end of the week and we make ourselves exhausted on Mondays just because it is Monday.  But I needed a boost.  This house did it.  It eased my pain.

Speaking of pain, back to the “shopping therapy” theory.  I had to wonder how much all of this cost.  Rumor had it last year that one homeowner owed Con Ed $22,750.63 and an arm and a leg for service during the month of December.  (I think we found our homeowner.)

Back in Michigan, my mother’s Christmas village has also grown, although not as a direct result of the WTC tragedy.   More likely an amalgamation of all those visits to Bronner’s.  At Bronner’s, they sell reindeer that talk, tin soldiers that walk and angels that both play the trumpet and navigate the solar system’s stars.  Oh, yes, and tons of ornaments and lights.

Dad still crawls on their roof the hang some of those lights, but it’s the magic mom does with her Christmas village that really takes the pecan tarts.  What began as a small, mirrored skating pond crammed on a kitchen corner hutch has bred so immensely that it now takes up half their family room, the New York equivalent of a two room apartment. 

This little village could easily be shelling out $2500 a month rent (-- unless, of course, it is located in lower Manhattan where real estate rates drastically dipped). 

Mom’s indoor village may be the equivalent to the Brooklyn outdoor display, two tributes to the holiday season and all the commercialism it stands for. 

Questions come to mind.  Is such indulgence a sin?  Is all this expense and expanse worth it?  Do we really need all these voluminous displays of man-made glory?

Yes.  For starters, we have all had enough man-made destruction this year, that’s for sure.  We can afford to be a tad more lavish.  We owe it to ourselves.  September 11 depleted everyone.  It’s time to live a little.  If living a little means decorating a lot, so be it.  Deck those halls; roll out those silver icicles that never vacuum up properly and string another batch of microwave cheese popcorn.  Are we being garish?  Perhaps. Ostentatious?  Most definitely.   Do we all need it right about now?  You bet!