After years of laughing at Americans, I have finally seen the festive lights
Most of the stuff that we laugh at Americans for eventually catches on over here. When I was growing up, the best craic in Ireland was giggling at the Yanks for picking up dog poo and having good teeth. Back then, Irish dogs were allowed roam free and wide and they defecated wherever they wanted without any human intervention, apart from the odd child sticking an ice-pop stick in the evidence. When we heard about the Americans and their dumb pooper scoopers, we’d slap our thighs in merriment even as the toxic bacteria was seeping through our pores and making some of us partially blind.
The teeth thing was, in retrospect, just stupid. Laughing at Donny Osmond because he had a perfect smile didn’t come easy to people whose own teeth faced eight different directions simultaneously but Lordy, we gave it a good go. Nobody of my parents’ generation had their own teeth beyond the age of about 30, yet somehow, the Americans were the eejits.
The least said about Hallowe’en the better.
There is some argument for trying to get in ahead of the curve on this easterly migration of Crazy Stuff Americans Do, but promoting extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalism and gun crime in Ireland is probably a step too far, even for the most slavish follower of fashion. In the meantime, we’ve got outdoor Christmas lights. Once the sole preserve of That House in Finglas and That House in Kilnamanagh, the American tradition of lighting up the outdoors — up until recently, just another source of endless mirth — has completely transformed the urban landscape in the last few years. More than that, the trend has managed to defy the natural order of things and has gone from being, let’s be honest, a bit common to requiring a six-figure salary and possibly a bank loan just to fund it. There are houses along the route of my evening walk whose outdoor lights display probably cost more than my kitchen renovation, the cost of which, eight years later, I still haven’t recovered from.
Like most things that come from America, I was initially highly sceptical about the lights. I might have conceded to carry poo bags and have my teeth whitened, but I drew the line at illuminating my hedges. But a few years back, I found myself quietly admiring the discreet strings of icicle lights that had started appearing under the eaves of my neighbours’ rooves and soon, our own porch roof was festooned with twinkling white icicles not naturally occuring in 14 degree December Dublin.
What I didn’t know back then, as I admired my six feet of strung out snow, was that icicle lights are just a gateway drug to Class A outdoor lights. The following year, I insisted on buying a second Christmas tree, covering it in lights and sticking it on the patio, where passers by couldn’t judge it. Then last year, I threaded a short string of flashing lights through my bare Japanese Maple, a tree that spends winter shamefully apologizing for its audacious flashy display of brilliance in October. To be honest, the string was too short and the battery too weak and the overall effect was of a tree that looked even more embarrassed than it usually does, so when the battery died — after, oh, a day or so, I didn’t bother replacing it.
But then last Christmas happened and in the chilly, locked down days that followed it, I took to walking a nightly illuminated beat that soothed my soul at the bleakest time. After a few nights, I plotted a route that took me around the best houses and along roads where strings of white lights had been wrapped around tree trunks. I don’t know who was responsible for all the co-ordinated trees, but they elevated unremarkable suburban housing estates in unlovable January into things of beauty; and the only heaviness in my heart was the creeping realization that the fecking Yanks had been right about something else.
I’ve three sets of lights out the front this year. The Japanese Maple is immodestly draped. The hedges are festooned. If you care to creep around the back and can manage to do so without falling over the bins, the hedges there are twinkling away as well. There are lights everywhere — all over the country — blinking rhythmically and mocking every grinchy, scroogy, Irish heart. I don’t know what Santa made of Ireland on Friday night, lit up like a gigantic zigging zagging runway, but my young nieces’ indecent haul of toys suggests it made his landing conditions easier. Sure he’s probably used to it. After all, outdoor lights aren’t the only brilliant, stupid festive idea that started in America.