Lighten Up

Like Santa with his list, Steve Buratti has a story to tell about nearly every house in his holiday-obsessed neighborhood, the four-block stretch of F Street known this time of year as Christmas Tree Lane.

There’s the homeowner who landscaped his frontyard to accommodate the life-size Nativity scene he puts up every year, and the couple who aren’t living in their house during remodeling but decided to decorate anyway.

The roof with 5,200 lights belongs to a neighbor nicknamed “Griswold,” after the Chevy Chase character who tends to overdo it. A revolving metal tree is new this year, designed by an engineer on the street. A truck driver across the way displays Santa at the wheel of an 18-wheeler.

Buratti is eager to see what the woodworking priest creates next year, and word on the street is that the nuns at the convent on the corner may add a few more lights.

Of course, mingled among the glowing, pulsing, moving frontyards between 5th and Doris--56 homes, by one neighbor’s count--are many darkened homes whose owners choose not to decorate.

“If we’ve got a house that doesn’t want to play, that’s OK,” Buratti said. “This isn’t something that’s forced on people.”

And there have been objections from neighbors during the five years that F Street has been Christmas Tree Lane. The traffic is the chief complaint--the busiest nights can attract more than 1,000 cars and hundreds of pedestrians.

“You haven’t lived until you’ve seen bumper-to-bumper traffic at 1:30 on Christmas morning,” Buratti said. “You wonder, what are these fools doing?”

Most likely, many of the same folks creeping down F Street this time of year used to get their Christmas kicks on Candy Cane Lane. For 38 years, Ventura’s Teloma Drive was Ventura County’s premier street for decorations.

But in 1993, Candy Cane Lane’s residents decided the traffic and work involved in creating their wonderland were too much. The next year, when a few homeowners on F Street decided to take over the tradition, the Candy Cane Laners offered advice and even donated some of their decorations.

But in the five years since, “We’ve gone so far beyond anything Candy Cane Lane ever thought of,” said Buratti, whose lights and Santa’s Workshop scene raise his electric bill more than $80 each December.

“We’re looking at six to seven bucks a month to amuse ourselves and do something for the city,” he said.

“And for the kids,” his wife, Jane, added.

At the 28 homes on Teloma Drive, some neighbors still display a few lights, and a couple even have scenes out front. Candy Cane Lane founders Glenn and Phyllis Gooss used to create a different, elaborate scene nearly every year, but they now put just a few poinsettias out front.

“I miss it in a way,” Glenn said. “I don’t miss the work, but I do miss the fun of it, doing it.”

Ventura resident Debra Williamson grew up going to Candy Cane Lane. She took her 3-year-old daughter, Taylor, to Oxnard on Wednesday night.

“It’s so nice because we can get out and walk,” Williamson said. “Other places you have to drive.”

Williamson was saving the Peanuts display at the home of Steve and Sharon Fleischer for last. Visitors to Christmas Tree Lane had better enjoy that scene now; the Fleischers are considering a theme change.

Steve Fleischer said he and his neighbors don’t try to top each other in their decorating, but “it’s always nice when somebody says ‘I like Charlie Brown the best.’ ”

Changing the Peanuts theme, perhaps to something Disney, will likely please the Fleischers’ dog, El Nino, who has surrendered his doghouse to Snoopy until after Christmas.

If Charlie Brown and his ice-fishing, snowball-throwing gang do disappear, it is hard to imagine anything more elaborate in its place.

But there are no limits, Steve Fleischer said, except “whatever your fuse box can handle.”