Guided by the lights

I’ve told you about how people here in the Valley they call Silicon go all-out at Halloween in terms of yard displays. And earlier this month I did a short spin through one Mountain View neighborhood to check out Christmas decorations.

But that was in daylight, so I thought I’d return at night to see how the displays played out in their natural environment.

Holy crap!

At least two of them were coordinated to music, although thankfully for the local residents, the volume on the players is low.

One of them was the yard with Yoda and Darth Vader:

There was more going on there theme-wise than a Tarantino flick.

And I have to say that Yoda and Darth didn’t seem all that engaging in the dark:

The Peanuts portion of the yard was a little better—Snoopy’s doghouse with another Snoopy on some kind of track in front of it. (Look—I have multiple degrees from respected academic institutions, and I really couldn’t figure it out):

Then it turned out that the other side of the house apparently fronted Sesame Street:

Well, spoilt for choice, really—but I’ll leave you with the nutcracker that guarded the walkway:

Oh, and they gave the deer something to drink, which I thought was kinda cute:

I walked on over towards the house with all the nativities. They also had music going; nothing, as you might imagine, involving a holly, jolly Christmas, though. Still, lot happening there; Nativity 1:

Nativity 2:

Moving on, this being the Valley they call Silicon, naturally, there was a festive Angry Bird:

Balanced off by the odd angel:

But I think my favorites were the geese; anyone can have deer, or angels--but geese!

They reminded me of Petunia’s Christmas, one of my favoritest ever children’s Christmas stories.

If you haven’t read it—get it from your library. Pronto.

Okay, I liked the polar bear, too:

I have to say that it wasn’t until I was walking down one of the unlighted side streets, dressed in black and hauling two cameras, that it occurred to me that it might look just the teensiest bit, uh, suspicious that there was someone out there shooting pictures of people’s houses—including of the interiors when they had their curtains open.

I started looking over my shoulder for patrol cars—I figured being a middle-aged white woman with no ID on her person wouldn’t be much of a mitigating factor when time came for me to ‘splain what the hell I was doing there. Fortunately, the need did not arise, or I doubt they’d have let me post from the slammer.

I’ll leave you with one last house that’s going to have a PG&E bill the size of the defense budget:

I hope your Christmas day is as bright and peaceful as these displays. Pax vobiscum.