Decking the Houses on a 2-Way Street : Some Fountain Valley neighbors love their elaborate Christmas displays and the friendliness it inspires. Others find the crowds and traffic are bah-humbug.
Though you’d never guess it by looking at her Fountain Valley home any time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Marilyn Brashear is quite the master of understatement.
As Brashear cheerfully discusses the 175 strings of colorful Christmas lights that adorn her yard and two-story home, the annual $200 increase in her December electricity bill and the hundreds of hours over five weekends it takes husband Larry, son Craig and her to deck the halls, she simply shrugs and smiles when asked why she does it.
“Well, I guess you might just say I’m a Christmas person,” Brashear responds.
Might? Try would. If the collection of more than 40 Santas on the shelves and tables in the Brashear living room didn’t tip you off, the front yard of her home on Shadbush Street certainly would.
As “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” trumpets from a pair of hidden speakers, a Santa perched on the roof surveys a lawn covered with white polyester batting to create the illusion of freshly fallen snow.
“I think that what goes on around here at Christmas is really special,” says Brashear, who first began decorating her home when her family moved into the tract near Brookhurst Street and Heil Avenue 21 years ago. The Brashear’s are credited by several neighbors as pioneering a tradition, but Marilyn says that she and Larry didn’t intentionally start anything.
“In the past five years or so, it’s really grown,” she says. “Not only are more neighbors doing it, but the decorations have gotten much more involved and elaborate. It keeps getting bigger every year.”
For the Brashears, the holiday happening has become a great way to cultivate relationships with their neighbors--although not everyone in the neighborhood embraces the tradition.
“We’ve gotten to know a lot of people around here,” Brashear says. “We all spend a lot more time in our yards because we’re getting our houses ready, so we get to visiting. One of the neighbors down the street has a little get-together in his garage, and another videotapes the neighborhood every year and gives all of us a copy. What happens around here is nice not only for those of us who live here, but it’s also nice for all the people who come to see it.”
And come they do. So many people visit the extravagantly decorated neighborhood every Christmas that several years ago, some disgruntled residents demanded the city assign police to control the bumper-to-bumper traffic that had turned their normally peaceful neighborhood into a parking lot.
Bev Finnell, who lives two doors down from the Brashears at the corner of Shadbush Street and Dandelion Circle, admits she sometimes grows weary of the traffic congestion. But Finnell says the unique sense of community that’s created among neighbors during this time of year is worth the inconvenience.
“There’s a really great feeling that results from having something in common with your neighbors,” says Finnell, who has transformed her front yard into a winter wonderland complete with a miniature ski lift that transports dolls from the driveway to the chimney.
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Not everyone, however, shares Finnell’s enthusiasm. While the tradition has created a sense of camaraderie among some, it has strained relationships among others. A polite “live and let live” philosophy prevails, but the spectacle on Shadbush Street, Dahlia Circle and Dandelion Circle clearly irritates some of those who live there.
“The whole thing has become a real intrusion,” says Debra Edmisten, who has lived on Dahlia Circle for 13 years. “We’ve had people knock on our door and ask to use the bathroom. We’ve had strangers peek in our front windows and park in our driveway while they walked around the neighborhood. We’ve had people urinate along side the house. It’s just unbelievable.”
Edmisten says there was a time years ago when she found the decorations in the area charming, but she now thinks the annual tradition has gotten out of hand.
“It’s like it’s become a competition,” Edmisten says. “They just keep adding stuff and more stuff. About five years ago when it really started becoming so big, my husband and I thought it was sort of funny that people would spend so much money and time doing this. Some of them start up before Halloween. It’s really gone too far.”
The Edmistens limit their exterior Christmas decorations to a solitary Christian dove and a peace sign, but they aren’t critical to the Edmisten’s sense of Yuletide cheer.
“Whether we get the decorations up or not isn’t really a big deal one way or another,” Edmisten says. “If we find time, we do. If we don’t, oh well.”
What would Edmisten say to those who would undoubtedly dismiss her as a Scrooge?
“I love the holidays, and I have a home that’s decorated in the Christian spirit,” she responds. “To me, Christmas isn’t about Santa riding a surfboard on the roof of somebody’s house. I’m sure the people around here just want to have fun and that their hearts in the right place, but I can’t help but feel they’ve really forgotten what Christmas is all about.”
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While Edmisten clearly has a philosophical difference with some of her neighbors, she says her bigger objection is a more practical one.
“The city provides traffic control beginning Dec. 11 and asked everyone this year to wait until then to turn on their lights, but a lot of them start up the day after Thanksgiving.”
The result, Edmisten says, is two weeks of near-gridlock on her own cul-de-sac.
“I drive 45 minutes on the freeway to get home and then have to hassle with even more traffic in the subdivision to get to my own house,” she says. “I don’t even feel like I can run to the store for a loaf of bread, because it can take a half hour to go two blocks.”
Christine Smith knows exactly how Edmisten feels. Smith, a hospital employee who is often on call, says there have been times when she has tried unsuccessfully for more than 40 minutes to inch out of her own driveway.
“Before they started controlling traffic it was really horrid,” says Smith, who lives several doors down from the center of the action on Dandelion Circle. “There have been times when no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get out of the driveway because people wouldn’t ease up and let me in. They acted like I wanted to cut in line, when all I really wanted to do was go to work.”
Between now and Christmas, the subdivision’s streets will be blocked off by Fountain Valley police every night between 6 and 10 to everyone except residents displaying special parking permits. Those who want to see the lights will have to walk through the area.
But Edmisten says the traffic restrictions will not eliminate all the holiday hassles.
“I can’t have a party during the holidays because of what goes on here,” she says. “If I do, my guests have to park blocks away and walk in. I’ve even got to go down to City Hall to get permits so my daughters can park in front of our house when they come home from college.”
Smith says she’s dealt with the frustration of living amid the holiday hoopla over the years by lodging her own silent protest. The absence of lights or decorations outside her home is no coincidence, Smith says, but rather a statement against what she considers the “excess” she perceives around her.
“I’m not normally a rebellious person, but leaving the front of the house dark is my way of saying ‘enough already,’ ” Smith says. “I have to admit there have even been years when I’ve thought about putting up a couple of strings of lights, but I never do. With everything else around here, no one would notice them anyway.”
