Christmas lights, I have noticed recently, recall Christmas past... When I was very small, going to my best friend’s house involved negotiating a long dark road which had no street lights. At Christmas time, the house at the end of this street, visible all the way along it, used to decorate an evergreen shrub with Christmas lights. They weren’t like lights you get now. They were real glass bulbs, in the shapes of Chinese lanterns, balls, cones and so on. The monsters that inhabited that dark street retreated from their glow.
There was something exceptional about walking up that street during December. I looked forward to the people who lived in the house decorating their tree, and, at same time, wondered what made them do it. The family would not be able to see the lights from inside it: they must then have decorated it only for the people outside - for me. The Christmas of my youth, then, is intimately bound up with an idea of the warmth of human nature.
I have often thought of going back to the house and saying thank you - but, and this is the odd thing, it is twenty years ago since their lights kept me safe. For all I know, it could be the same family who live in the house - knowing the town, it probably is. But the friend has moved on; I haven’t heard from him in twelve years. I now have no reason to travel the road.
And so I don’t know if the tree is still decorated every year. I could look, I suppose. I don’t want to: if the Chinese lanterns are still there, then all is right with the world.
If they’re not there, then the monsters probably still are.