A Blue Christmas by Ginger Dehlinger

The festival of lights we associate with the Christmas season usually includes some combination of Macy’s red, angel white or evergreen, so why am I drawn to the less common blue? My favorite color is lavender, with yellow a close second, so I almost never wear blue unless it’s blue denim, and I don’t have more than an occasional splash of blue anywhere in my home. But whenever I see a blue light, be it Christmas or otherwise, I feel a softness behind my eyes that makes me stop and stare. It isn’t just any shade of blue that has this hold on me. I don’t know if it even has a name. I would best describe it as ethereal cobalt, or the blue of a delphinium blossom in the noonday sun.

The first time I remember seeing this color and experiencing a strange attraction to it was in my childhood home where we owned one string of multi-colored Christmas lights that didn’t blink, twinkle or bubble, and only one of which was blue. Every year we selected a Christmas tree larger than Charlie Brown’s but not so tall as to look underdressed wearing a single string of lights. To protect the tree’s needles we put small, star-shaped aluminum collars around the bulbs before screwing them into their sockets. I positioned the bulbs just so to prevent their collars from obscuring the full effect of the light, and then always made sure I could see the blue one from wherever I was sitting.

On the rare evenings our parents were out of the house, my sisters and I would darken the living room and experience the magic of this radiant tree that prettified our modest home for a few weeks each year. No one spoke, each sister absorbed in her own thoughts, mine soothed by the one blue light that held my gaze.

By the time I was married and had a house of my own, the traditional string of multi-colored lights had become passé. I decorated my Christmas trees with strings of clear, twinkling lights meant, I suppose, to replicate sparkling snowflakes or stars on a winter’s night.

I live in Bend, Oregon where Sarah Street is a virtual wonderland of lights during the month of December. One of the properties on that street was for many years bedecked in hundreds of blue lights. They trimmed the roofline, windows, and doors of the house and glowed in the branches of the trees and bushes in the front yard. I used to drive over there as often as I could during the most hectic season of the year, and sit in the dark like I did as a child, filling my soul with the blue serenity that lessened my stress.

When I drove over there last Christmas, most of the houses on Sarah Street were dressed for the season, but not a single light illuminated the house of blue. I wanted to check with the neighbors to find out if the people living there had moved, and if so, get their new address. But I was busy as usual, and with no blue light fix that year, I feel a blue Christmas coming on.

I had never shared this blue light fascination with my husband —it just didn’t seem important until my favorite place to enjoy Christmas lights went dark. So I told him about the one string of lights I grew up with, and while I was out shopping one day he wrapped a string of blue lights around a pole outside our kitchen window. That night he left the dinner table for a minute and turned them on. When I carried the dishes to the sink my heart swelled and tears welled at the beautiful sight. Now I bask in this mesmerizing color every night, spending longer than probably necessary to do the dishes. 

Ginger Dehlinger

“fiction embraced by fact”

Brute Heart

Never Done

http://gdehlinger.blogspot.com