Blue lights, bubble lights, revolving trees — it's Christmas!

A few days ago, I told Dan I had come up with a new slogan that I hoped would catch on: "Christmas. It's all about change!"

I was reacting — immaturely, I suppose — to some annoyingly sweet reference to Christmas being all about love and family and tradition and doing it in such an over-sentimentalized, tear-jerking, exploitative way that it just rubbed me the wrong way. It was trying to take you back to where it thinks your childhood Christmas is lurking.

But I guess they're right. Christmas isn't about change. It's about doing things over and over and over, every year, in exactly the same way. Isn't it? Isn't it?

You can see that I made myself think.

In fact, every year, I look at the Canadian Tire catalogue and all the flyers and brochures from the hardware stores and the department stores and I see page after page of "new" Christmas stuff — new-style trees and wreaths and lights and ornaments — and I always wonder who's buying it? There's way too much simply to supply a young generation of people just starting out and buying their Christmas stuff. But doesn't everyone else already have all their stuff? And don't they use it making the same Christmas year after year?

It so happens that we went the other night to David Myles' Christmas show with Symphony Nova Scotia. David does put on a good show. He has so much personality and he’s funny — not to mention a good singer/musician. He sang a lot of the old familiars and some of his own Christmas compositions which turned out to be nice also.

One of the songs he sang was one I didn't know: Buck Owens' Blue Christmas Lights.

(Excuse me, Miss, but do you have any...)

Blue Christmas lights for my Christmas tree?

I want some blue Christmas lights just as blue as me

The one I love has set me free, but I still got her memory

Give me blue Christmas lights for my Christmas tree. . .

It wasn't a great song, not particularly memorable, but there must have been something evocative about it because right there, in the middle of the concert, I began to think back to my childhood and the very first tree I ever saw that was covered completely with blue lights.

In the '50s, in Chatham, NB, I lived in the NB Power Commission houses — commonly called the "hydro houses" — right on the edge of town. I often remind people that the Welcome to Chatham sign was in our backyard.

There were six houses, three on each side of the small cul-de-sac, each one across from its own mirror image. On our side, our house was closest to the road. In the middle was the Calabrese family, and next to them, the Parks family.

The Parks two oldest girls were almost my age — Edith (Edie) a little bit older, Lynn a little bit younger — and we spent a lot of childhood time together. It was always a little bit of an adventure for me because their family was very different from mine. It was a big family, four kids then, five later, and much more raucous than mine. Five kids! My family would probably be considered reserved.

When I look back now, I think the Parks parents, Anna and Howard, were very young — maybe barely out of their 20s. They were from up-river. Anna was from Whitneyville and Howard from (I'm pretty sure) Sunny Corner. Howard was robust and a great kidder.

They took great enjoyment out of life and Christmas was a time of year that they leaped into with gusto. They had spectacular decorations and it was there that I first saw a tree that was completely lit with blue lights. And now that I think about it, the blue-lit tree was only one of their Christmas trees that I remember. One year, Howard had the tree on a revolving platform that turned at the flick of an electric switch.

Of course, the tree had to be placed out into the room, away from the walls, and it had to be decorated all the way around, not just on the part that faced the room. I may be embellishing it in my own memory but I think there was music involved too. I think Christmas melodies played while the tree was revolving. It was quite a neighbourhood attraction.

Another year, the Parks' tree had these lights. Do you remember these?

I'm not sure they ever caught on in a big way. I've probably seen them a few times since that year at the Parks but I think I remember reading or hearing that they weren't very reliable and maybe were more trouble than they were worth.

Our family pretty much had these and we had them as long as I can remember.

Every year, they came out of the box and Dad would untangle them and plug them in and replace the ones that weren't lit. The only new bulbs that ever got bought at our house were the little packages of replacement bulbs.

But you can't run a consumer society on a family like ours, who used all the same Christmas stuff year after year. (I still have some of it — not the lights but the treasured old glass ornaments.) Today, Howard would have the time of his life at the Canadian Tire, changing it up every Christmas and delighting little neighbour kids with theme trees, coloured trees, and trees of all sizes for all occasions — tasteful, tacky and otherwise.

Howard would have a ball.