Holiday Potpourri

By big city standards, it's crap. If you've lived in a city where most neighbors decorate their yards to the hilt for Christmas and allow you to drive by for free, Las Vegas' Gift of Lights Holiday Drive-thru Spectacular is, by comparison, a sad little affair. It winds around the back of a deteriorating park and is highlighted by a two-dimensional sparkly light drawing of a Southwest Airplane, and seems, as such, a testament to the accruing failures of this city to emulate any other traditional community with success. It begins on a dirt road with red rope lights spelling out "Review-Journal" rather than "Merry Christmas" or any similar seasonal sentiment; it costs $12 and lasts maybe 10 minutes. So from the traditional perspective, it's challenged.

Which is the beginning of the reason I love it, and the reason we go every year, with our car windows down and our voices bellowing out carols. Here in the back of Sunset Park, not 10 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip, is a twinkly commentary on the inadvertent genius of backstreet Las Vegas.

Every single light display in the Drive-thru Spectacular is an advertisement, or is accompanied by a well-lit placard announcing who sponsored it. It's a selfless season of self-promotion. Dozens of companies have tossed together a yard ornament of some sort and pasted their name up for advertising. Some are fantastically shameless, such as the Carl's Junior Star. It's simply a big Carl's Junior Star made of Christmas lights that you pay to drive by. It's not even as stirring a graphic accomplishment as the actual Carl's Jr. sign in the front of each of the chain's restaurants, available for viewing free of charge. And yet there it is, in the Holiday Drive-thru Spectacular, and there we are, bumper to bumper, 12 bucks the poorer, looking out our windows at it, sans Western Bacon Cheeseburger, singing about baby Jesus.

Other displays make a minor attempt to connect their advertising ploy to the season, such as RC Willey's giant "RC Willey" in blue lights. Well, no, not them. And not "Meehan and Associates" written in strings of holiday lights, and not "Port-o-Subs" in strings of holiday lights. These are context-free ads that we paid to drive by. But other sponsors made noble attempts to allude to the season—for example, there is a giant 12-part display for the Twelve Days of Christmas accompanied by a giant "Presented by US Bank" light display. Here, at least, a nod to the holidays, and beautifully, a nod to the banking industry. It's as if US Bank is taking credit not just for the display but for the 12 days of Christmas—all set up in this microcosm of post-post-modern American holidays on a back lot in a decrepit park in Vegas.

Gloriously, each year it seems to get bigger and less Christmasy and more crowded. This year, on the way in, as we paid and donated items to Goodwill and bought cider from the Boy Scouts, we were given a rolled-up advertising flier from Remax Realtors through our window, because nothing says virgin birth or even Festival of Lights or Happy Kwanza like consult your real-estate professionals.

Most assuredly, there are hardworking volunteers who deserve credit for, and charities that benefit from, this light show, and I'm sincere in my love for it. It's honest whether it means to be or not. The festival of lights has boiled down not the meaning, but the power, of Christmas to its most potent formula, and set it in sync with loving Christmas tunes on a local radio station. Each year we point and oooh and ahhh over a few bulb-images of Mary and the camels, Santa and the reindeers, and ads for fast food and real estate, furniture stores and daily newspapers.

And we rejoice in our good fortune.

Belgium: Christmas breakfast is supposed to be a sweet bread baked in the shape of baby Jesus.

Finland: Much rutabaga is eaten.

Germany: According to a website titled "Christmas Celebrations Around the World": "On Christmas Day, fish (carp) or goose will be cooked."

Hungary: On December 6, children put their shoes outside and toys or candies appear in them overnight. Also, children are told that baby Jesus brings the Christmas tree.

Portugal: At midnight on Christmas Eve, families eat a special meal of salted, dry cod and boiled potatoes.

Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk this Christmas

Alan Jackson

Favorite verse:

"Just last year when I was only 7

"Now I'm almost 8, as you can see

"You came home a quarter past 11

"And fell down underneath our Christmas tree"

My Name Is Christmas Carol

Skip Ewing

Favorite verse:

"She said, 'My name is Christmas Carol

"I was born on Christmas Day

"I don't know who my daddy is

"My mommy's gone away

"All I want for Christmas is

"Someone to take me home

"Does anybody want

"A Christmas Carol of their own?'"

Let's Be Naughty (and Save Santa the Trip)

Allan Gary

Favorite Two Verses:

"Well Santa's face would turn red if he could only see

"What we'll be unwrapping underneath our Christmas tree

"Well this year all I'm asking for is one little wish

"Let's be naughty and save Santa the trip ...

"Naked naughty, and save Santa the trip

"Nasty naughty, and save Santa the trip

"Bad bad bad bad bad naughty, and save Santa the trip

"Bad bad bad naughty, and save Santa the trip"

Santa's Got a Brand New Bag

SheDaisy

Favorite verse:

"Santa's got a brand new bag

"As he finds his Zen down on the kitchen floor

"He lights a fat Cohiba from his humidor

"This Christmas I want something I never had

"'Cause Santa's got a brand new bag"

Little Timmy has divorced parents, a dead sister, one leg and three nipples. He lives in a shack with his evil step-grandmother, who doesn't believe in Christmas, or bathing. One day he comes across a mysterious talking bedbug, who whisks him away to the land of Christmas insects, where they sing of toys and cakes and a world without Raid. Thanks to the bedbug, little Timmy learns the true meaning of Christmas, falls in love with his adorable neighbor, reunites his parents, reanimates his sister and grows a new leg.

His third nipple remains as a reminder of all he's overcome.

We see Tim Burton directing.