My name is Michael, I’m Jewish, and I love looking at Christmas lights on people’s houses.
Whew. There, I said it. I’ve carried that around for far too long. OK, not really. But as a kid I always felt a little guilty about loving the lavish displays on people’s roofs, front yards, and windows. It wasn’t my holiday, after all, and so I felt a little strange about really admiring homes that were celebrating a holiday that I never did.
But just about every year of my adult life, wherever I’ve been living, I’ve taken a day or two this time of year to drive around and see the lights. Whether it was a house in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. that had the most garishly-decorated blow-up Santa I’ve ever seen (seriously, this thing could’ve been a cocktail waitress at Caesars in Vegas, it was so done up), or the greatest display ever on the property of a motel in Daytona Beach, Fla. (seriously, you have to see this thing in person; this photo gives you a tiny slice of its awesomeness), the holiday lights always make me happy.
It’s my first holiday season living in N.Y. in a decade, and I’m living in a brand-new neighborhood I know nothing about, so I really didn’t know what I’d find when my girlfriend and I went searching last Saturday night. Happily, I found plenty of houses decorated to the nines, including the house pictured above.
I know the holiday season is way too commercialized and it’s disgusting what Black Friday has become and all that. But seeing holiday lights every December always fills me with joy and contentment. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures, isn’t it?
**I love this so much. The above video was shot in a Target store in Lawrence, Kansas recently. It may be the world’s first-ever senior citizen flash mob, and it’s awesome. (If you don’t know what a flash mob is, it’s when a group of people appear to spontaneously start doing a choreographed dance in a public place).
I smiled the whole time I watched this, especially in the beginning when someone doing the filming asked “Is this thing on?”
**Finally, maybe the greatest accidental “own goal” in soccer ever. This was in Hong Kong, and the dude who makes the amazing kick is actually a defender, I think trying to kick the ball out of bounds and out of harm’s way. Still, even though it was into the wrong net, a pretty amazing goal:
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