by Jim Vandergriff

One of the few holiday traditions in my family -- really about the only one that is done similarly enough each year to qualify as a tradition -- is to drive around the neighborhoods of the town in which we are living that year and look at the Christmas lights. As long as I can remember, at some time convenient for everyone, the entire family has piled into the car together and spent a couple of hours cruising slowly through as many different neighborhoods as possible, pointing, looking, sometimes stopping to look more carefully, discussing, and critiquing.

This has never been a rigidly structured tradition. Though it usually occurs on a Friday or Saturday night, the particular night is chosen on the spur of the moment. It seems to have always begun with a statement like, "Want to go look at the lights?"

Likewise, no one was/is ever coerced into going, though I, for instance, don’t remember ever missing it. Some years some of my siblings didn’t go; other years they did.

The travel route has been a little more structured. We always start in the wealthier neighborhoods where the light displays are more elaborate and move downward to the less affluent neighborhoods, observing the municipal decorations as we chance on them all during the drive.

The conversations during the drive always involve criticism (both positive and negative) of the displays themselves and of the decorators or sponsors. For instance, the Baptist Church in the town where my parents currently live has for the last several years used live camels, sheep and cattle in its nativity display. I recall harsh criticism of the church for subjecting the animals to long periods of cold and virtual immobility.

When I was married and raising small children, I continued this tradition without even thinking about it. Now divorced and living alone, I continue it by taking my elderly, widowed aunt, who lives near me, and my non-custodial daughter on the same kind of tour each year. Also, last year, my parents, my sister, my daughter and I spent Christmas in Tucson visiting my brother. A couple of nights before Christmas, we toured a section of Tucson especially known for its light displays. (Sorry, I don't remember the name of the area, but the display is apparently sanctioned and sponsored by the city. [Winterhaven])

FUNCTIONS

This tradition seems to have several functions, though the main one seems to be family unity. Both as a child and an adult, I have always moved frequently -- every two or three years -- so I have never put down strong roots in any community. Likewise, we were not a religious family, so we didn't have strong holiday traditions in the more usual sense. Furthermore, we were never a close family in other senses. We tended to do things separately, coming together only at the evening table -- and even that ended when my siblings and I reached our teens. Too, we are a much divorced family, so even things like who attends our Thanksgiving dinner or when we open Christmas gifts changes often. This light viewing is, in fact, the only such family activity that I can recall that has gone with us from locale to locale. It is the only activity we have shared year after year, place after place, without major variation. It is an activity that we children voluntarily participated in and all carried over into our adult lives and into our own families. Because of that, I think it must represent the concept of family to us. We are, today, individuals who share few convictions and values, but who have rather normal family bonds and family feelings. I think we developed those partly through this activity.

A second function of this activity was, I think, to teach certain values. For instance, my parents’ comments about the various light displays often had to do with tastefulness. Neither of my parents approved of gaudiness or ostentation, so they made derisive or admonitory comments about such displays. Likewise, they disparaged overly religious displays on the houses of hypocrites. Those comments helped teach me how to think about hypocrisy -- and religion in general. I think, too, that I learned my social values partly through these outings: I can remember my parents questioning (rhetorically) why a certain church or businessman spent so much money on a display when there were needy people not being cared for. I remember, too, my father being angry about his tax dollars being used to decorate the streets for a religious holiday.

A third function was to teach us how to have fun inexpensively. My father was a low-level civil servant and a part-time farmer; my mother was, until I was 13, a housewife. They had five children in their first 10 years of marriage. In short, we were rather poor. I recall only one extended family vacation and the only movies we ever saw (as a family) were a half dozen or so Tarzan movies in the late 1940's. Everything else we did involved spending no money -- except for a little gasoline. This "looking at the Christmas lights" was our main family entertainment in the winters.

Today, my siblings and I continue that tradition. I usually go twice -- once with my daughter and once with my aunt. For me, both trips have the conscious purpose of strengthening family bonds. I’m very concerned that my daughter, who does not live with me, learn my family’s ways, so I have consciously created rituals for her, and I go out of my way to involve her in my family’s doings. I explain to her that we do these things to make our family ties stronger and tell her she needs to learn them so she can pass them on to her own children.

I take my aunt because I am the only relative she has nearby. That side of the family is small and scattered, and not very close emotionally, so I feel it my duty to be family at that time of year. It, too, is a conscious bond-strengthening thing: I want my aunt to feel loved and important in the last years of her life and I can give her some of that by spending those few hours with her. But I would also feel wrong, neglectful, if I did not do it.

So for several reasons, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas each year, we all bundle our families into our cars and "look at the Christmas lights," a simple thing, but one that reforges our family bonds.