Lights!

It takes guts to brand yourself "Christmastown USA." It takes even more guts to buy a house there knowing that for one month of every year, your quiet street will turn into a parking lot of gawkers.

It took us an hour to travel the 2 mile stretch of town. But we had the Christmas music radio station to keep us company and a cute kid bundled up in the back of a pickup next to us kept yelling "Merry Christmas!" "Happy New Year!" Indeed.

A random memory came back to me as we inched along: I think I was 12 or 13, so it must have been the late 80s, sometime in December. My dad came home with a brand new red and white VW Vanogon. It was our family's first van - and more importantly the first vehicle in which all seven of us could fit without doubling up.

We couldn't wait to try it out - so we piled into the tan vinyl seats bundled in our pajamas and went in search of Christmas lights; driving aimlessly for the sake of being together.