Lights in the Heights

Is it sacrilegious to think Christmas decorations are great?  I think people should have colorful flashing lights up all year long.  The trees I can do without, but the lights should stay up.  

The best lights in the Heights are on 186th between Audubon and Amsterdam.  It’s this second floor fire escape with Christmas lights hanging all over the place.  Awesome.  

I was talking with this dude who said Christmas lights are ok, but only in snow covered suburbs.  He said the lights in the Heights were lame and pathetic.  I told him I think it’s just the opposite.  These Dominicans are doing the best they can.  They’ve got no snow covered yards.  No gently sloping roofs on which to hang their festive gear.  Instead, they jam their few flashing lights into the measly space they have available.  A window, a fire escape, the phone booths…And that makes them all the more festive and merry.  Not merry in the Christmas sense, but merry in the “let’s hang colorful flashing lights outside our windows and on our fire escape” sense.  

Which brings me to the movie Elf.  It was just on cable and I guess that’s what made me think about the lights in the Heights.  Will Ferrell running around NYC in an Elf costume just makes you think.  And I realized this snowy time in New York is really one of the best.  Bad Christmas jingles in all the stores, ten times more stupid tourists running all over the place and everyone wants to go ice skating.  

This time of year is just different.

This time of year, one can understand Buddy the Elf (“Hi, this is Buddy the Elf, what’s you’re favorite color?”) when he says, “I just like to smile! Smiling's my favorite.”