Christmas Lights

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go;
Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is the lights. I love driving at night around this time of year. It just makes me smile.
A couple nights ago my husband and I were in the nicer part of Dallas where all the mansions are. It didn’t take long to notice that these people spared no expense when it came to their Christmas décor. There were horse drawn carriages giving tours about the city, and limos taking the local residents to and from their holiday affairs.

We decided to make an event of it and went around looking at all the lights. As we roamed the streets we sipped hot chocolate and listened to a Bing Crosby Christmas album. We oohed and ahhed over the extravagant displays. We both agreed that our favorite part was being able to see inside the windows and catch a glimpse of the lavish interiors. With all the houses lit up at night it was as though they were intentially inviting us to peer into their glamourous lifestyles.

We talked about what our dream home would consist of and we discussed what we liked and disliked about the area. Somehow our conversation gradually turned into a debate about the social classes. I won’t say who said what, but it sounded something like this:

“Most people don’t understand us. We live way below the national average”
“I don’t think so I think we are just normal, we are middle class”
“Way lower middle MAYBE”
“What do you think middle class is!?”
“I AM JUST SAYING most people have things that we don’t have”
“ Compared to THESE PEOPLE, yeah.”
“NO really, we live far below the national standard.”
“Do you know there are people out there that would only dream of going to Starbuck’s”
“Drinking coffee doesn’t make you middle class”
“ WHATEVER, I can’t prove this to you, but I am going to look it up when we get home”
“ Okay you go ahead and google it.”

And as we passed by all the twinkling lights, the music continued to play in the background,
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”