Let the lighting of Newport-Mesa begin

It’s deja vu all over again. This is the day, my brothers. There’s

no way around it. It has to be done. Get them out, untangle them,

climb that ladder and start tacking or stapling, your choice.

Due to a deluge of requests -- assuming you consider three a

deluge -- we herein reprise “The Official Peter Buffa Guide to

Hanging Christmas Lights.” Read it. Absorb it. Memorize it. But most

of all, don’t climb the ladder without it.

Stretch and hang. Stretch and hang. Stretch and hang the Christmas

lights. It is time and every night now, a few more houses shine

bright now. The neighborhood becomes a bigger-than-life jigsaw

puzzle, a few more pieces falling into place night by night.

It’s interesting, though. Christmas lights are a gender-sensitive

issue. Women notice the aesthetics -- men are much more interested in

number and timing. In our culture, there is little question that

getting your bulbs up is a guy thing. We hunt, we gather, we hang the

lights.

To male humans, when the lights go up is much more important than

the lights themselves. Thanksgiving weekend seems to be the earliest

time at which light hanging is socially acceptable.

If your eaves go electric earlier than this very weekend, you risk

the wrath of neighbor males. It’s considered boastful, taunting, an

“in-your-face” gesture. “Look at me. I am the ruler of all that I

survey, the alpha male. Not even T-Day and mine are up. Yours are

not. Your wife is right. You are a loser.”

Conversely, the optimum time to throw the switch is today, the

Sunday after Thanksgiving. By virtue of timing alone, the message is:

“I am a member of our little community. My lights are neither a

statement nor a challenge. I am a team player.”

Granted, that’s a lot of sublimation over Christmas lights, but

the male ego is a complex thing.

You can tell a lot about people from their lights. Most Yule

lighters fall into four categories: minimalist, intermediate,

high-intermediate and advanced. The minimalist hangs a few strings of

the large, old-school outdoor lights -- red, blue, green, white, etc.

-- along the eaves. Nothing around windows or garage doors, just the

eaves. Period. The message is clear. “I am a team player, sort of.

Happy holidays. Just don’t talk to me about it.”

To move up to the intermediate level, you need the smaller white,

indoor-outdoor lights. Where you fall within the intermediate range

depends on how many small, white lights you put up, and where you put

them. Nothing too ostentatious, just a quiet statement that says

“I’ll do more than the minimalist. But there is a limit.”

Point totals begin to rise as your electric greetings spread to

windows, garage door-frames, etc. To be rated as a high-intermediate,

you need to do moderately clever things with columns and overhangs

and stuff small white lights in the shrubbery and flowerbeds. That’s

where I am. The high-intermediate range, not the flowerbeds.

It’s worth noting that the ratings have been somewhat obscured in

the last few years by the spread of “icicle lights” -- random-length

strands that hang from the eaves like, well, icicles, hence the name.

There must be a trick to hanging icicle lights. On some houses they

are stylish and really do look like icicles. On others, it looks like

a stiff wind blew the lights from the house next door onto the roof.

As a result, there is no clear ruling as to whether icicle lights

raise or lower your overall rating.

To be certified at the advanced or “YTLE” (Yuletide Luminary

Engineer) level, your small white lights need to spread like a virus.

At this level, you got your lights running up the roof, your lights

running down the chimney, your lights wrapped around tree trunks,

your lighted wire-frame figures (ecclesiastical and secular) perched

on the roof and the lawn, and the plus ultra -- lights that spell

things. “Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth, Happy Hanukkah, Ho Ho Ho,”

etc. And when your lights spell things, you have reached the double

diamond slopes. You are a certified YTLE.

A word to the wise: this is also the level at which you will be

stepping onto a slippery social slope. As you progress over the years

from intermediate to advanced, your neighbors will watch carefully --

first with curiosity, then admiration, then disdain. The progression

from “Isn’t that pretty?” to “That’s his best ever!” to “Is that

grotesque or what?” to “Where is that number for code enforcement?”

is a shorter road than you might think.

Left unchecked, excessive lighting begets disorientation, which

begets obsession, which begets dementia. Ho, ho, and ... oh yeah ...

ho. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached via e-mail at [email protected].