HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

Good news: colored Christmas lights are back. Some of the more advanced Christmas-lights fashionistas might have been aware of this trend building for some time but, as far as I’m concerned, the whole wonderful, old-fashioned style has exploded on the scene this year. It reminds me of the Christmases of my childhood, which dates me, but who cares? Not all of us are under thirty, so if we can remember house after house and street after street strung with colored lights, well, we receive a walk down memory lane that could be the best thing that’s happened to us in a long while.

Can anyone remember just when it was that strings of tiny white lights became so de rigueur, so excruciatingly tasteful, that no one would hang a set of red, green, blue, and yellow lights to save his or her life? I believe it was the late 1970s. You’d see fireflies of white lights around topiary bushes in front of upscale restaurants, wrapped around the enameled poles of reproduction Edwardian lanterns, and adorning the trees in posh hotel lobbies. Suddenly, everyone, and I mean everyone, went for the little white lights.

Back in the early 1990s when my son, Charlie, was seven or eight, he had somewhere along the line caught a glimpse of colored Christmas lights. (My guess is that some old granny in the neighborhood kept a strand burning in her basement and said, “You wanna see something freaky, son?”)

Anyway, my kid asked if we could have colored lights on our Christmas tree. “Uh, no,” I said. “Why not?” he wanted to know. How do you explain to a seven-year-old about something being out of taste? “I don’t know if there are any available,” I answered truthfully.

Now they’re available, and you’ll see them all over Oak Bluffs — winding around the potted trees along the harbor, twinkling on our tall town tree, decking people’s porches, windows, and boughs, looping around our already jazzy Victorian roof-lines — color is back and hopefully here to stay. White lights are still acceptable and, okay, tasteful. They’re pretty, but do they make us happy? I’m willing to bet, not as happy as colored lights!

So run out and get some and string ‘em up today. Accept no substitutes.

Feeling eleemosynary? (Man, I love that word.) Betty Burton writes from the Vineyard Committee on Hunger Family-to-Family program that for the Thanksgiving turkey dinners (for which many Bluffers donated $25 per), demand exceeded the supply: After 82 meals were dispersed, the turkeys ran out. Betty writes, “It is very hard standing at the desk giving out turkeys and looking down the line and knowing we won’t have enough for everyone.”

The committee anticipates even more need for its Friday, Dec. 14 distribution of Christmas meals at the First Baptist church. With high fuel bills looming for all of us, those on a fixed-income will surely suffer. Anyone wishing to help may send checks to the committee at P.O. Box 1874, Vineyard Haven MA 02568. Twenty-five bucks buys (thanks to the Pacheco family at Reliable Market), a 12-pound turkey, 5 pounds of potatoes, a pound of carrots, a pound of onions, 2 pounds of apples, stuffing mix, pumpkin pie mix, cranberry sauce, and turkey gravy.

If you haven’t got a stamp handy to mail a donation, you can drop off your checks with me at Sun Porch Books, and I’ll run the payments over to the Island Food Pantry which operates under the aegis of the committee.

At the Oak Bluffs Library, Portuguese-English story time will take place on Saturday, Dec. 15 at 10:30 a.m. Nine-year-old Amadine will read in Portuguese, librarian Irene Tewksbury in English.

Just a booster shot and reminder about the Oak Bluffs School Holiday Bazaar: it’s Saturday, Dec. 15 from 1 to 4 p.m. That’s tomorrow if you’ve picked up your Gazette copy while the ink is still fresh.

That spring chicken, Estelle Surprenant, who lives on Nashawena in Oak Bluffs, turned 90 last week! Her family hosted a luncheon for her at the Coonamesset Inn in Falmouth. Estelle was overwhelmed because she expected about twenty people and nearly ninety showed up including her kids Muriel, Dennis, Gerald, Jeanne, Renee, and Diane, her 16 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren, and 12 nieces and nephews. Fourteen Vineyarders showed up, among them colleagues of Estelle’s in the Friends of Oak Bluffs charitable organization.