No Coloreds Allowed

My sister instant-messaged me the other day from “Burg,“ the small town in Pennsylvania where she lives with my parents. Seems the rules for the downtown business Christmas decorating contest have changed.

All lights must be white.

Christmas lights have always been a big deal in the small towns of western PA. Stringing them was an annual autumn ritual. Dad would bring the boxes up out of the basement and we’d dance around him as he untangled the lights on the floor in the kitchen. We supervised as he plugged them in to test them - huge, old-fashioned, three-inch-long tapered globes in opaque orange, white, green, red, and blue - and change any burned out bulbs before taking them out to drape them over the spruce in the front yard. We used the same type of lights inside on our live Christmas trees.

On December nights, we’d bundle up in swishy nylon snow pants and pile in the car to tour the neighborhoods. Nearly every house was lit in some way, ranging from a few electric candles in the windows to full-blown, electric-meter-spinning, Santa-threw-up-on-the-house complete encrustation of homes in tiny pink flashing lights (yes, there’s a specific house I have in mind).

As years passed, the big-bulbed lights burned out and were replaced by smaller, safer strands of what the British call “fairy lights.” In short order, these were available in a wide array of colors and styles, so that one house soon became all blue lights, another all red and white, and so forth. In one neighborhood, where the professionals lived (i.e. the high-school teachers and the orthodondist) mostly white lights prevailed. We maintained our tradition of multi-colored strands.

Then, one year, suddenly, all-white was all the rage. It seemed like 75% of the mostly blue-collar, former mining town wanted to emulate those educated people up on Highland Avenue. We were teen-agers by then, and growing more aware of the homogeneity of our hometown. Christmas was definitely the only real winter holiday - Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and solstice were just stories in books put out by uppity academics who think they’re better than us working class folk. There were no black people or Jewish people in town. There were no openly gay people or pagan nature worshippers, or if there were, they certainly didn’t let on. For a few years, there was a family of doctors from India, complete with Hindu gods, but they soon took their sacred cows to other pastures. Being bright and curious, my sister and I started to sense there was something lacking - if not outright wrong - about our little town.

As we slowly drove through the neighborhoods that December, my parents simply didn’t like the look of the all-white decorations, finding them cold and perhaps a little cheerless. But to my sister and me, the white lights took on the symbolic meaning of no diversity, lack of tolerance, failure of imagination, and resistance to changing times.

“No coloreds allowed,” my sister said, and we laughed, but it was, sadly, kind of true.

You have to understand, this is the land time forgot, and when an African-American man did turn up in town last year, the only thing people could comment on was that he looked like football star Jerome Bettis. Sports and gangs are still their main references for men of color.

Now the edict has come down from the office of the community development director that the downtown businesses shall be all white this holiday season. Of course, if a business doesn’t want to participate in the contest, they don’t have to, and can put up a giant blue menorah if they wanted, but I doubt anybody will. Prizes will be awarded, and the dying businesses of this shrinking town need every cent and every scrap of recognition and promotion they can get. My sister reports that plenty of downtown stores are going out of business or are already shuttered, yet the development director continues to spin that things are great and continues to attempt to up-scale and gentrify the town. “It’s like she thinks Burg is the new Palm Springs or something,” my sister said. Only there’s no work, no money, and people are leaving in droves instead of coming to visit.

The area has simply failed to keep up with the pace of modern life, reminiscing about the days when coal when king and perhaps relying too much on a dream of attracting tourists - a solution from the outside rather than from within. The place is stuck in a tar pit of old habits, out-moded social mores, and brain drain.

I wonder if anyone is really fooled by the covering of twinkly, sparkly, misleadlingly-pure white lights.