Caught up in the Christmas spirit

With its rosy-cheeked sunsets and chiseled good looks, California is as fine a place as any to celebrate the solstice and all its attendant after-parties. Christmas, for one. After observing 55 of them, I’m starting to think this little celebration might really be taking off.

In California, you don’t really need to hang lights this time of year. Where Eastern states turn sullen and sooty, California has this natural December glow, the sun buttering up the aspen or backlighting the mountaintops.

That would be decoration enough. Then up go the holiday lights anyway — in the harbors, on the bridges or behind the leaded glass of some little bungalow — and the SoCal landscape becomes almost impossibly lovely.

So, welcome winter. Welcome Christmas.

I’ve had bad days but never a bad Christmas. This time of year, dusk begins around noon and lasts five hours. There is a cinema to the shadows. Is there a term for the way dusk drapes across the canyons in mid-December? Afterlight? Trailglow?

Now, I adore cynicism, sprinkle it on my cereal, add it as a boost to my smoothies — it keeps me young. Yet for a week or two, I put all that on hold.

Forget the cynics. Feed them to the alligators. If you’re sad at Christmas, Charlie Brown, you really have only yourself to blame.

Authenticity is important — almost to the exclusion of everything else. Minus that, give me a good cheeseball Christmas special to warm these long winter nights.

There was just the most awful one the other night, my daughter and I horrified at some country holiday special. For a hat, the host wore a huge ribboned centerpiece. The only thing better would’ve been a teakettle. Or a litter of puppies.

As we laughed, my daughter claimed to hate all holiday specials, while I insisted that I enjoyed such kitsch going back to Burl Ives and Bing Crosby — the worse, the better.

I remember in the later stages of his career, Crosby used to do these holiday specials in which his family would participate, and even young viewers could tell that his wife was inappropriately younger. Bada-boom, bada-Bing.

Right then, I realized that there were different rules for old men with money. I vowed to one day be one.

Which brings us to Santa, the greatest capitalist the world has ever seen.

I believe in Santa, believe in him fully, though as with a lot of great elves you need to cut the guy a little slack.

Santa once groped my wife at a cocktail party on the Westside. I punched him, then forgave him, acknowledging that she looks like moonglow in any sort of minky sweater. Chardonnay. Candles. Firelight. Who can keep their head about them?

No one. Not even Santa.

So I forgave him, scratched him from the naughty list, then focused on the roaring conversations of those around me.

I like a good cozy holiday party, so crowded you bump butts and elbows, the windows steamy — the sorts of scenes Frank Capra used to paint.

After an hour or two of this, the Stockholm syndrome usually kicks in and I begin to side with my captors. To date, the parties this year have been especially noteworthy. Like holiday TV specials, even the bad ones have been good.

Favorite lines, gleaned from stuffy cocktail parties salvaged only by the twisted wisdom of longtime friends:

— “You had me at Merlot.”

— “They’re renovating the gym? Ugh, guess I’ll just go back to hitting people.”

— Me: “How’s your wonderful wife?” Friend: “A little menopausal. We’re using her to heat the house.”

This alone is one reason to embrace Christmas — the grunty little half-truths from friends, the witty asides, the way we make the bad become good.

Sure, Christmas now seems all midnight sales and too many rebates. When wasn’t it?

One co-worker, a Brit, was even lambasting the way her beloved old London used to over-celebrate Christmas — Dickens this and Dickens that, bows and greenery everywhere, choirs and horse carriages, what a thing to have to go through every year.

She did this while hanging lights across her cubicle in downtown L.A.

Just remember this about Christmas: Children are the best ornaments. Friends are the real feasts.

Like life, the holidays will be over before you know it.

So, welcome winter. Welcome Christmas.

Chris Erskine on the Middle Ages

New year, new column. Chris Erskine will return to the home front in mid-January with the Middle Ages, on love, life and late fatherhood, including such parental milestones as adult children moving back home.

chris.erskine@latimes.com

twitter.com/erskinetimes