Exterior Illumination, Clark

Christopher Columbus Park trellis gets the holiday razzle dazzle treatment. ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography

I’ve been watching a lot of tree lighting clips lately. A lot. This is easy to do because of algorithms, which operate like brunch buffets: if you liked the pancakes, you’ll like the waffles, and if you liked the waffles, you’ll like the crepes and before you know it you’re a bloated mess who hasn’t moved in three hours.

I blame the Rockefeller Center tree lighting in New York City. This is the Formula 1 of American tree lightings; it’s the gateway drug to this very specific brand of seasonal spectacle. Each year for more than nine decades a gigantic Norway spruce arrives in New York City all trussed up on a flatbed truck until it gets raised and brought to life like a Christmas golem. The tree comes from a different location each year and it’s the job of Rockefeller Center’s head gardener, Erik Pauze (hello with that last name!), to not only find the tree but to become its best friend over the course of months. He feeds, waters, keeps it trimmed and healthy, and eventually oversees its long haul into the city. Erik Pauze is Rockefeller Center’s horticultural Obi-Wan Kenobi. Topping out at 80 feet, this year’s tree is wreathed in 50,000 candy-colored lights (about 5 miles of wire) with a 3D star covered in 3 million Swarovski crystals weighing about 900 pounds. So to watch the tree go from any other shaggy green beast to a gorgeous disco diva, radiant in glittering rainbow-colored constellations, feels almost sacred. With great illumination comes great responsibility.

We were not an exterior decore kind of family for any holiday. An American flag hung outside our front door. That was it. All-purpose, because loving goddamn democracy is always in season! My father was just not the type of guy to struggle with ladders and labor for hours trying to solve The Riddle of the Ancient Bulbs. It probably didn’t hurt that we lived in a quiet, unassuming neighborhood where the houses were mostly ranches, like ours, or split-levels. There were no McMansions glammed up by professional, seasonal fluffers to make us think there was anything exceptional about our undecked halls.

But one year my mother made a request. This was an unusual occurrence, a rare thing like the government owing you money for a change. My mother was far too accommodating person and over-extended as everyone’s caregiver. She put herself last or not at all. When she really spoke up about something that was your cue to shut your yammer hole, listen, and pay the woman the respect she deserved. Candles. My mother wanted white plastic candles in the windows of the rooms that faced the street. They were the kind of candles that belonged in the many paned, many windowed Victorian houses that litter New England towns. The ones that cast a serene glow of convivial, tranquil warmth and “goodwill toward men.” Looking at those houses, you could almost hear the singing by the piano, taste the homemade mulled cider, smell the freshly baked gingerbread, and know those people were living a superior existence. And my mother thought we could compete with our 3 bedroom, one bathroom, single story ranch house built in the late-1950s. Bless her little holiday heart.

Seeing as how this was 1989 there were only two places these white candles were coming from: Kmart or Channel, a hardware and supply store similar to Ace Hardware. Even though my dad was not a home improvement or DIY person, he loved nothing more than spending a few hours on a Saturday afternoon at Channel. He usually came back with a bag of batteries, that one item that you could justify buying because something in the house always needed new batteries, right? They are the airtight consumer alibi.

But these plastic candles looked like they came from neither store. They looked like they came from the Someone at My Dad’s Work Was Getting Rid of Unwanted Holiday Junk store. For starters they arrived unceremoniously in a cardboard box from my dad’s office. Second, they just seemed a little outdated, like they had already put in a good four or five years of merry and bright.

Holiday window lights were both a very exciting development in the Moeschen household AND a very big project. You would have thought my dad was laying pipe for the Trans-Alaskan line with all the extension cords routed underneath and behind furniture to the various outlets. The entire thing encompassed windows in my parents’ bedroom; three candles for the big bay window in our living room; and then four for the windows on our enclosed porch. The interior rooms went relatively smoothly. My brother and I knew this because we could hear my dad muttering a handful of “goddamnits,” but not a single “sonovaBITCH,” which was his classic cartoon rage tell and our signal that if we were going to make fun of his tantrum we should at least wait until dinnertime. All that was left was the porch.

The house came with a screened in porch when my parents bought it in 1975. I was around 6 or 7 when they decided to enclose it to make it more of a 3-seasons space. They hired a contractor to put up wood walls—unfinished, a summertime family “painting party” was in our future—add an exterior storm door and interior screen door, and install glass windows that slid up to allow you to slide screens into place. The porch came in under budget, which if you’re not doing it yourself, is never good. The windows leaked so that little ice luges built up in the corners over the course of the winter and any other kind of damp weather gave the interior a nice spritzing. The sills were not what those in the construction game call “level.” That small detail hardly mattered until the Moeschens’ Season of Light arrived and it did.

 The 4-inch oval bases of the plastic lights were supposed to sit flat, but not so much on those sills. First the candles tipped themselves to the natural pitch of the wood, resting their heads against the glass like tired bus riders. My dad moved them back a bit, causing them to topple over when there was even the slightest draft snaking through the porch, which was always. Finally duct tape came to the rescue. Though the candles were still not centered, they at least remained upright and vigilant. And to be fair, any decent contractor would probably agree that the windows weren’t centered either—game recognizes game.  

At dusk my mother would task either me or my brother with “turning on the lights.” We’d go from room to room performing a choreography of plugging and unplugging to bring the house to life. And it did. She looked amazing, completely unlike her ordinary self, transformed by the illumination inside.