Fake Icicles in True Spirit of the Season

For Christmas, I bought her pearls. Plastic pearls. Ten bucks a box.

“Hand me that next string,” I tell the boy.

“This one?” he asks.

“Yeah, that one.”

We string them along the rain gutter, hanging them from little hooks that I slip over the gutter’s lip. Every few feet, I place a hook. From below, the boy feeds me the tiny pearl-like lights.

“These icicle lights are going to look great,” says the boy.

“Right,” I say.

For years, we have strung lights along the rain gutters. This year, those lights suddenly weren’t good enough. They had to be icicle lights, little strands that hang down from the edge of the roof like . . . well, icicles.

“Here’s the next strand,” the boy says.

“I need more hooks,” I say.

These icicle lights have been around a few years. Last year you saw them a lot. This year, they are everywhere. Every house and apartment building has them. The restaurants have them. The hair and nail emporiums have them.

Eventually, these icicle lights will be on every home and business in America, one long strand, starting in Maine and zigzagging up and down the country till it reaches the California coast, where someone will wrap it around a sailboat mast in Newport Harbor.

“OK, plug them in,” someone in Maine will say, and the whole country will light up at once.

“That’ll look nice,” says the little girl, when I tell her what’s ahead.

“I think you’ll like it,” I say.

“Can I come up the ladder?” the little girl asks.

“Maybe later,” I say.

“OK,” she says, sitting back down on the lawn to watch.

*

The nice thing about a ladder is that I am up here alone, not like on the couch or an easy chair, where I am vulnerable to any kid who passes.

On a ladder, a dad can get a little space. No kids hanging across your shoulders. No one putting pennies down your socks.

“More lights,” I tell the boy.

“Huh?”

“Next strand,” I tell him.

For the most part, it’s an easy installation, a one-story house. There’s no tricky second-story work, like my friend J.P. has at his house.

At his house, you have to climb on the roof, then hang over the edge of the second floor, feeling blindly for the edge of the gutter, watching your shadow in the cold, hard driveway below.

That’s how J.P. installs lights. He is either the bravest dad I know or a cheap circus act. A suburban acrobat. Cirque du J.P.

“More lights,” I tell the boy.

“Huh?”

“Next strand,” I tell him.

“Oh,” he says, as if this is a surprise that I would ask him for more Christmas lights. For the last 45 minutes, we have been hanging Christmas lights. Each time I ask him for more, he seems surprised. It’s a system we’ve had for several years now.

“Hey, Dad?” he asks.

“What?”

“In the movie ‘Scream,’ why does she answer the phone the second time?”

“What?”

“When the phone rings the second time, why doesn’t Drew Barrymore just let the answering machine get it?” he asks.

It’s an interesting question. For some reason, I hadn’t considered it much.

“Because she’s a Barrymore,” I say, hazarding a guess.

“Oh,” he says, and goes back to playing his belly like a bongo drum.

“More lights,” I tell him.

“Huh?” he says.

*

Every December we do this, just as the winds arrive, just as the big gusts flatten Christmas tree lot tents all around Southern California.

Every December these Christmas winds come. They blow extra hard each time some guy climbs a creaky ladder with a string of lights around his neck.

“Careful, Dad,” the little girl says when a big gust hits.

“No problem,” I say as the ladder wobbles a little.

I grab for the house. The house wobbles a little. I guess that’s California for you. Everything’s a little wobbly, even the ground.

“Can I come up now?” the little girl asks.

“Not yet,” I say.

The kids don’t have huge expectations for these new icicle lights. They just hope that they’ll turn out to be incredible, that’s all, with millions and millions of lights that lure locals and tourists alike to line up for hours in their cars, to drive by our little house and believe in God and Christmas more than ever before. That’s all they want from these lights. Nothing more.

“They look OK?” I ask as I hang another set.

“Not really,” the little girl says.

Which is when her mother comes outside. Like a lot of mothers, she struggles with Christmas, loves the beauty behind it but is nearly crushed by all the demands--so much so that she is pretty sure that Christmas is a conspiracy to kill her, to sap every last ounce of her strength and leave her sprawled in some mall, with harried shoppers stepping over and around her, hissing at her under their breath.

I assure her that there is no conspiracy. Holidays happen. No one’s to blame. At least not in a legal sense.

That’s why for Christmas I bought her pearls. Plastic pearls. Ten bucks a box.

“Like the lights, Mom?” the little girl asks, pointing to the house, where I stand like Vanna White, gesturing toward her prize.

My wife looks at the lights. She looks at me on the ladder, wobbling in the winds, grabbing the house for support.

She deserves more than plastic pearls, my wife. She deserves a drink and a winning lottery ticket. She deserves diamonds and a fancy car. Instead, she has us.

“They’re beautiful,” she says, shielding her eyes from the Christmas winds.

“See, they’re beautiful,” I tell the boy.

“Huh?” he asks.

“More lights,” I say.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.