The 12 Months of Christmas : Nothing’s as Cool as the Sounds of Yule--Even in March

Seasonally speaking, the Beach Boys are best known for pining for an “Endless Summer,” which is all well and good and appropriately Californian. When I hear the boys harmonize on “Little Saint Nick,” though, I long for an endless Christmas.

All of which begins to explain why--though I don’t often get angry--my roommates heard a tone of voice they’d never been privilege to from me when I recently caught one of them in a capricious act of betrayal. I had found him red-handed--or perhaps I should say red-, green- and yellow-handed--in front of the house, in the process of taking down my beloved Christmas lights.

His explanation had something to do with tackiness and the fact that “it is almost spring, you know,” none of which held much melted snow with me. The heated discussion that ensued between this heartless grinch and myself made for anything but a silent night.

All right, armchair abnormal-psychologists, I admit it . . . I “can’t let go.” I’m “Xmas-retentive.”

The blame for this condition falls on pop singer Dwight Twilley.

Years ago, I read an interview with Twilley in which he described an occasion on which the president of his recording company at that time, Arista’s Clive Davis, visited him at the recording studio. The way I remember Twilley describing it, Davis walked in and, upon finding that Twilley had strung colored Christmas lights all over the studio, declared in so many words that the singer lacked professional good sense and/or was a little nutso. Twilley said that that was when he realized things probably wouldn’t work out between him and the company.

Instead of taking that as a warning--that hanging onto Christmas and its accompanying regalia could come between you and those around you--I took it as a cogent reminder that: Hey! I’m an adult now! And Mom and Dad aren’t around anymore to overrule me about having the Christmas lights up year round!

Mock me if you will. But would any doubter dare debate me on the fact that the things you love--food, fine wine and the faces of friends, especially girlfriends--look even better glimpsed in the glow of strings of colored bulbs?

Quizzical stares also sometimes come from mail carriers and salespeople who wander up to my front porch in spring or summer and are greeted by wafting strains of the Chairman of the Season’s Greetings Board, Frank Sinatra, crooning “Jingle bells, jin-jingle bells, jingle all the way. . . .”

Christmas music really is a specific pop sub-genre, and one that scarcely deserves to be shunted off to just one or two months a year. It’s warm. It’s fuzzy. It’s full of major chords and thoughts of home and hearth and goodness and mercy.

The obvious happy standards, as sung by Der Bingle and Nat King Cole, need no reprisal here. Often overlooked is how many fabulous sad Christmas songs there are--from “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (the melancholia of which escapes most listeners who didn’t see the Judy Garland musical “Meet Me in St. Louis” that it’s originally from) to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (with that last trick line, “if only in my dreams”) to the yearning Phil Spector/Darlene Love classic “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” to Prince’s positively morbid “Another Lonely Christmas.” Even these downers leave me with an inexplicably radiant glow.

If the stereo ever breaks down on a hot July night, there are the movies (and we’re not just talking “Christmas in July” here).

From recent years, Bill Forsyth’s “Comfort and Joy” and Joe Dante’s “Gremlins” offer very different pleasures. But the man to beat for unbridled, believable sentimentality is, of course, Frank Capra and his universally praised “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I hold almost as much fondness for Capra’s lesser-seen “Meet John Doe,” in which suicidal Gary Cooper threatens to jump from what looks like L.A. City Hall during a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. (Yes, every winter, I pray I’ll get to see it snow in downtown Los Angeles.)

Capra’s repeated use of the averted suicide at Christmas time is potent for any number of reasons, perhaps not the least of which is its symbolism on a global scale: If every year we come a little closer to annihilating ourselves and each other, perhaps it’s not too fantastic to surmise that maybe the way we at least pretend to indulge in the traditional values of love and sharing each late December is what helps stave off the evil tide a little longer. Then again, probably not, but a few strings of Christmas lights across the White House and Kremlin certainly couldn’t hurt anything, right?

It having been a few weeks since the little altercation in the front yard, I should mention that--though there’s certainly no direct connection--that objecting roommate is gone, and the Christmas lights are still up.