COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES -- peter buffa

Stretch, hang. Stretch, hang. Stretch and hang the Christmas lights. It

is time. Interesting, isn’t it? Every night, driving home, a few more

houses shine bright. The neighborhood becomes an oversized jigsaw puzzle,

a few pieces falling into place at a time.

Christmas lights are a gender-sensitive issue. Women tend to notice the

aesthetics of Christmas lights. Men are much more interested in timing.

In our culture, getting the bulbs up is a guy thing. We hunt, we gather,

we hang the lights. Timing is everything. Thanksgiving weekend seems to

be the earliest time at which lights are socially acceptable.

If your eaves go electric earlier than that, you risk the wrath of

neighboring males. Lighting up prior to Thanksgiving is considered

boastful, immodest, an “in-your-face” gesture: “Look at me. Not even

T-Day and mine are up. I am the ruler of all that I survey -- the alpha

male. Your wife is right. You are a loser.”

The optimum time to throw the switch is the Saturday or Sunday after

Thanksgiving. 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. Everyone gets a free pass until the weekend after

Thanksgiving -- i.e., this weekend, which I am cashing in this year due

to excessive travel.

Interestingly, timing is just as important in getting the lights down as

it is in getting them up. You have until Jan. 15 to get them down. After

that, your social standing plummets.

People at lower socioeconomic levels are exempt from timing requirements

under the law. They’re allowed to leave their lights up year-round, then

flip them on when the holidays roll around. As long as they turn them off

by Jan. 15, it’s no harm, no foul.

Regardless of gender, you can tell a lot about people from their lights.

The minimalist hangs a few strings of the large, older style outdoor

lights -- red, blue, green, white, etc. -- along the eaves. Nothing

around windows or garage door frames. Along 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 small, all-white,

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

depends on how many small, white lights you have, and where you put them.

Point totals begin to rise as your electric greetings spread to windows,

garage door frames, etc.

To be rated as a mid-intermediate, you need to stuff small white lights

in foliage and flower beds. That’s where I am. Not in the flower beds --

in the mid-intermediate range. Nothing too ostentatious. Just a quiet

statement that “I am more than a minimalist, but by no means advanced.”

Within the intermediate range, 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. There must be a

trick to hanging those things. On some houses, they look stylish and

really do evoke the spirit of icicles. On others, it looks like a stiff

wind blew the lights from the house next door onto the roof, and

everything got tangled in a big, amorphous jumble.

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

raise or lower your rating as a YTL (Yuletide Luminary Engineer).

To be certified at the advanced 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)

on the roof and on the lawn, and the o7 coup de theatref7 -- lights

that spell things. “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Peace on Earth, Ho

Ho Ho,” whatever. Doesn’t matter. When you have lights that spell things,

you have reached the double diamond slopes. You are an advanced YTL.

This is also the level, however, at which you find yourself on a very

slippery social slope. As you progress through the years from

intermediate to advanced, your neighbors will watch carefully.

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. In the final stage,

when cars start to cruise your block slowly from sunset to midnight, you

will be shunned more completely than an Amish farmer who trades in his

buggy for a Mustang convertible.

Pay close heed to the annual stories about some house in Indiana that has

a lighted manger scene with live camels, all the Peanuts characters and

145,000 lights, which have forced the town council to impose rolling

brown-outs between 6 and 11. Unchecked, an advanced rating begets

obsession, which begets dementia.

So there you have it. Pay careful attention to how you wire your

holidays. Santa isn’t the only one making a list and checking it twice.

Barely three weeks left. I gotta go.

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

E-mail him at o7 PtrB4@AOL.comf7 .