Shining example of Christmas spirit (From Watford Observer)

Shining example of Christmas spirit

11:43am Friday 6th January 2012

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Driving back from Vicarage Road on Saturday, and spirits were a little low.

My son was scowling in the back of the car, despondent at the fact that life could be so unfair as to gift Leeds United a last-minute equaliser.

At the age of six, he has yet to go through the rites of passage that equip English football fans with the certain knowledge that things will go wrong, sooner or later.

While most Watford fans will have left the ground grumbling about the result, the referee, and Marvin Sordell’s decision to creep up on the ball, rather than just thump it, few will have been amazed. “Typical Watford” was the tweet that kept appearing in the aftermath.

So we needed cheering up. And the good news was that we were driving through Croxley Green, where a bit of Christmas goodwill is there for the taking.

Because, situated within the streets of Baldwins Lane, stands perhaps the most festively decorated house in the area, replete with innumerable Christmas lights, nodding reindeers, waving Santas and snow-encrusted model houses. It’s the sort of thing you can probably see from space, lit up with such gusto that you can see it from a long, long way away.

This may not be great news if you live in Lancing Way but, then again, Dave Edwards has been doing this since 1978, so by now it should be showing up on surveys – “Before you buy the property, by the way, you should know that for about a month every year this place looks like a miniature version of the Magic Kingdom…is that okay?”– and I don’t imagine he’s about to lose his enthusiasm.

There are apparently about 15,000 bulbs on his roof, porch and garden. Heaven only knows what he used to do in the days when one dud bulb used to cause the whole string to stop working.

And it really did cheer us up. My son stood amazed at the house and said, pretty emphatically, that he’d like to come and live here as soon as possible. A friendly lady gave him a lollipop and we cheerfully put some money in the collecting box, with the proceeds going to the Air Ambulance. This year’s total is already up to £1,500, despite the effort of some pleasant character to steal the charity takings – and let’s all wish that particular person a very Happy Christmas – and you can add that to the £30,000 Dave’s collected over the years already.

This is a world where the cohesion of community is under stress. If you want proof, look at the number of people who’ve taken to putting rocks on the bit of verge outside their house just to make sure that nobody parks there, even though – er – they don’t own the verge. It’s a me-first attitude that is seeping though our value system. And revelling in over-the-top Christmas embellishments is our first line of defence.

There are those who will find all this rather tawdry, those who see Christmas decorations as a little vulgar unless they come from expensive shops and are so subtle as to be invisible. I say pah.

Christmas decorations should be fun and bright and varied, with a few considered stylish pieces mixed up with a whole load of colourful baubles.

Tinsel draped everywhere, blinking lights on the tree and a generous sprinkling of Chinese-made jollity. We have a snowman who constantly plays a tune and lifts up his hat. Or at least he would do if we didn’t unplug the poor snowy chap after his tenth ho-ho-ho. But it’s the thought that counts there.

On the streets, I like things to be a little more understated. The year when the Regent Street lights started being sponsored by whichever children’s movie was about to come out was, in retrospect, a bad one for puritans.

Big silver stars look better than big silver stars with Lightning McQueen’s head poking through them, but such is the price of progress and the reach of sponsorship. As it happens, our High Street lights are good this year – not overbearing, but comfortingly just there.

But what was best about the local shopping was the evening when the streets were closed, the carol singers all came together, and everyone came to eat hog roast rolls, visit Santa’s grotto and generally behave like some kind of Jimmy Stewart-inspired ball of seasonal goodwill. This year, there were no funfair rides and it was so much better for that.

People said hello to each other, the rain stayed away, and it felt really very Christmassy. The Father Christmas in Poores gave out his usual array of gifts – my plaudits, by the way, to anyone who’s on duty dressing up as Santa over the coming week or so – and even the 12-year-olds stopped texting each other for a moment to smile and say hello to people they hadn’t seen since the last Christmas shopping night.

It’s easy to be absurdly over-sentimental about Christmas. It’s expensive and stressful, it puts too much focus on one meal, and it sends divorce rates rocketing. But there are moments when it does seem to have a unique ability to bring together people of different ages and backgrounds.

So we stood there in Croxley Green and smiled a lot. My son wondered whether you could still play football in a garden full of lit-up reindeers, while I pondered just how long it would take to collect all these nick-nacks. And all around us, people were stopping to peer, and laugh, and put some money into the collecting tin. And that’s the Christmas spirit for you, right there – outside Dave Edwards’ house, in Lancing Way.