|
Sunday, December 22, 2002
Covington: Buhangin Lights
By Gary Covington
IT'S CHRISTMAS again. The perfect opportunity to show off and out-dazzle the neighbors. Literally.
The Buhangin Road where I live has suddenly erupted into an extravaganza of fairy lights.The annual and unofficial who-has-the-best-decorations competition is under way.
Parols, star-shaped Christmas lanterns, beam from every verandah. Strings of multi-colored lights are flashing, dancing, sparkling their way around door and window frames, cascading over balconies and flitting through the trees like so many rainbow fireflies. To withstand the extra load Pop has reinforced the fuse box with three-inch nails. Never mind that the house may burn to the ground -- just look at those lights.
Our neighbor to the rear had his fifteen minutes of fame three years ago with an extraordinary display of lights, which, with several excursions spiraling up handy trees, encircled his house. No ordinary run of the mill hoi polloi lights either but genuine Racing Lights with Musical Accompaniment.
That first Christmas season, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, trains of colored flashes shunted this way and that around his eaves. Never-ending, the Musical Accompaniment accompanied; a tinny yuletide medley conducted by an electronic maestro. At Casa Covington fairy light fatigue was setting in fast, the wire-cutters beckoned.
Mercifully time will tell and it did. Three years later the Racing Lights are on their last legs, hardly able to spark one bulb in front of another. The Musical Accompaniment is muted, an occasional bing-bonging in slow waltz time. It's like living next door to a superannuated disco.
We don't go in for illuminations much but if there were a prize for the best Christmas tree we'd win hands down. For a start it's real, bought years ago at a Panabo nursery, hale and hearty and living in an earthenware pot.
Of course it's not a proper European Christmas tree, more a sort of Asian mutant and it has grown to be rather big. To be honest it looks like a wooden utility pole parked in the corner of the sala with a few droopy green bits nailed on as an afterthought but never mind -- when it comes to decorating a tree the wife is a genius.
Miles of glittering tinsel are wound around the trunk. Branches spruced up with a wash and then loaded down with Christmassy knick-knacks; shiny glass globes, paper flowers and miniature electric candles. Peering from the top, its head bowed beneath the ceiling, is an angel. Below, the earthenware pot is disguised with cheerful wrapping paper.
Plugged in and switched on the tree is a feast for the eyes, a marvel for the Christmas Day visitors to behold, those distant relations we see only once a year who arrive to claim their gifts and eat us out of house and home.
But hey, let's not grumble -- tis the season of goodwill to all men. Open a bottle and offer a toast. Here's to a rollicking Christmas and a splendid 2003.
(December 22 2002 issue)
Want Sun.Star news on your mobile phone? Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
