Lights Were Full of Holiday Cheer, but Toddler Had Other Plans

For three years now, I’ve been trying to get to the DWP’s Festival of Lights in Griffith Park. Three years spent living within spitting distance of the darned thing. But by the time I’d muster the energy (on a weekend) and the appropriate festive feelings (excruciatingly close to Christmas Eve), the gridlock on Los Feliz Boulevard stretched from Western Avenue to Glendale. The Festival of Taillights, as my friend Steven calls it. Daunted, I invariably fled.

But this year, I have a toddler. If Danny Mac is not quite old enough to grasp the reason behind the joyful anticipation of the season, then at least he can point at all the pretty lights and say, “Oh, wow.” And I would travel to the North Pole itself at rush hour to hear Danny Mac say, “Oh, wow.”

So I resolved to get to that dang festival this year even if it meant going right after work during the first week of December, despite my barely emergent holiday spirit and nominal level of energy.

We’ve done a fair amount of Christmas cruising already, in search of the ultimate twinkle, and although it’s early yet, I’ve noticed a few trends. Those white icicle lights that made their debut a year or so ago now glaze entire power grids; the discreet pinpoint lights remain more popular than the big honking bulbs with which Dad transformed the house into a blazing reindeer landing pad, and all-blue motifs, with their odd retro-futuristic glow, have lost favor.

When I moved here from eastern regions a decade ago, I found Christmas in Los Angeles an alarming proposition. Wreaths and holly looked grossly out of place in 70-degree weather with palm trees and succulents standing beachily by. I blinked behind my perpetually necessary sunglasses and longed for a winter-dimmed sky. Amid the general glare, holiday lights seemed redundant, even ridiculous. But the longings of the season are undeniable and, it would seem, adjustable. Long before my son’s birth, I found beauty in the garlanded yuccas and the cactus with the star on top, and made an annual pilgrimage to Hollywood Boulevard, where the halls have been decked wonderfully beyond the limits of good taste.

But it was Griffith Park or bust this year, so last Thursday I drove straight from downtown. We approached the park with growing wonderment. No traffic. No traffic at all. I cut through the dark like a getaway car and reached the start of the festival without so much as a pause. Triumphant, I tuned the radio to the Festival of Lights official station, took a little flier from a nice man in a reflective vest, turned off my headlights and entered a tunnel of lights, a star shower of lights. There were elves and snowmen, glittering bridges and choo-choo trains, cowboys gathered around the campfire, bathing beauties and musclemen. Snowflakes fell and wheels turned and flowers blazed, and in the back seat Danny Mac slept through the whole thing. I shook his knee, I called his name, I even pinched his hand (a tiny little pinch, born of desperation). I could have cried. Instead, I settled back and said, “Oh, wow.”