’TIS THE SEASON . . .

The neighbors are always trying to make me look bad. They work at it like it’s their job . . . and sometimes I wonder if they’re on my wife’s payroll. Last month it was all about raking leaves. Coming home after a hard day in the classroom—okay, so it was an hour and fifteen minutes . . . but it was hard—I could feel the eyes of my across-the-street neighbor boring into my back as I hoisted my bag of books and student papers out of my car. She had been raking leaves since sun-up . . . sun-up the day before . . . and I knew that she was passing judgment on the unkempt state of my front yard. What could I say? Hey, I knew what she didn’t know: that my wife had finally hired a crew to come and clean up the yard the next day. So I just smiled and called out: “Hey, I don’t do anything that I can’t put on my Vita!”

But it’s not just about raking leaves. It’s about mowing the lawn. And painting the trim. And trimming the hedge. And hedging my bets . . . And betting . . . Yes, there’s a pattern: the neighbors up and down the block are always just a step or two—or a week or two . . . or three—ahead of me in all of these outdoorsy domestic enterprises.

But this time of year is always the worst: just when my seasonal affective disorder begins to kick in, and just when the weather turns lousy, I’m supposed to announce Joy to the World! by climbing up on a ladder or clambering out on our porch roof to hang a festive string of lights. My yard-raking neighbor had her outdoor lights up on December 1st—and a candle in every window too. Even our new neighbors next door have lights up—and they moved in just a week ago: their holiday decorations must have been the first box they unpacked!

The past couple of years I just haven’t gotten around to hanging lights (I think that the disagreeable weather agreed with my bad attitude, providing me with a reasonable excuse not to push my luck on a ladder), but this year I’m really feeling the pressure . . . which I suppose I’ll succumb to. The last time I was given an ultimatum by the chorus of sopranos I live with—“Have those lights hung by the time we get home from shopping . . . or else”—I really outdid myself. I’m not sure what I’ll manage to do this year, but here’s what my wife and daughters saw when they came around the corner three or four years ago: