Christmas Lights

Like any proper Christmas story, this one has a jolly old elf, a ghost of Christmas past and a belief in the essential goodness of human nature.It's set in the snow-covered village of Hampden. OK, Hampden isn't really a village; it's a Baltimore neighborhood. And this has been the warmest it's been in umpteen years. But when the 700 block of W. 34th Street turns on its Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving, it feels a lot like a village. And there's quite a bit of Styrofoam snow around.

FireWestminster: Firefighters from Reese, Pleasant Valley and Manchester assisted Westminster at 10: 10 a.m. Monday, responding to a natural gas leak in the 500 block of Baltimore Blvd. Units were out 40 minutes.PoliceWestminster: A resident of Cypress Point Court told police Sunday that someone damaged bushes and Christmas lights in the front yard. Damage was estimated at $260.Westminster: A resident of Collier Court told police Sunday that someone damaged a pine tree outside a home. Damage was estimated at $200.

BEIJING -- A block east of the Forbidden City, Wang Da dons his Santa costume every other hour to spread cheer among customers at the six-story Sun Dong An Plaza -- one of Beijing's mammoth, modern shopping centers.Riding the escalators in a long silver beard with bells jingling from his leather boots, he hands out purple and white balloons as well as wooden tree ornaments from a red bag slung over his shoulder.Many of the children have no idea who Santa is and a few are frightened. Occasionally, though, one recognizes the jolly old elf. "Thank you, Old Man Christmas," says a little boy as Wang hands him a balloon.

Mark Goldstrom's annual New Year's Eve party started with a ladder. A 28-foot extension ladder that, when he got it home, he realized was taller than he needed to clean the gutters on his Owings Mills house.Some people might have returned the ladder to Hechinger's or swapped it for a 20-foot. But this 41-year-old marketing manager for a cement company is nothing if not creative. What could he do about this ladder overcapacity problem, he asked himself.Ummm. ... He is in a business that uses many thousands of buckets each year, and they were sitting all around him. Ummm.

YOU CAN SEE THE glow from the Lockard family's front yard from miles away.One year a gentleman saw the lights from the air. When his flight landed at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, he drove to Carroll County to confirm what he suspected: The glow came from the best display of Christmas lights he had ever seen.About 4,200 lights cover a 100-foot-tall Southern pine tree that was planted on the Lockards' property by a relative 100 years ago. Six generations of Lockards have lived on the 10-acre farm on Old Westminster Pike, and since 1991 they have been creating a lawn and light display that includes 35 spotlights and 300 hand-painted, hand-cut lawn ornaments with a holiday theme.

It's holidays without the hassles.Year after year after year, Harold A. Carter dragged out boxes of snarled Christmas lights and spent hours untangling the wires. Then he'd climb up a rickety ladder and hang from a tree limb to drape a line of bulbs -- all in the spirit of Christmas.But this year, the two-story-high rooftop wasn't that appealing to the 62-year-old minister from New Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore. So his wife, Weptanomah, picked up the telephone, dialed a holiday landscaper and voila!

Clear, clear, clear, tiny, twinkly and magical and pristine. Clear lights draped delicately in dogwood branches, clear, tapered lights in the window. Clear lights intertwined with pine rope in elegant loopy garlands that climax in big, beautiful wreathes, lighted, of course, with clear bulbs. And here and there, an electrified reindeer, a trophy shot through with clear lights, grazing, prancing or standing in reflective repose.That's Rodgers Forge at Christmastime. You might even think it's written into the neighborhood covenant: Thou must decorate your home with clear lights, or be banished from this yuppie row-home community for eternity.

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE will be served at our house tonight. It is a Christmas Eve tradition that got off to a shaky start 17 years ago.The recipe, lifted from a cookbook written by Maida Heatter, is a two-step affair. First, you make the chocolate mousse, then you add the whipped-cream topping.My wife started the holiday tradition on a cold December night. She finished the first step, the mousse, but then was interrupted. She had to go to the hospital and give birth.Eventually I got around to completing the second step and carried the finished dessert to Johns Hopkins Hospital where we gazed at our first-born -- a baby boy wearing a Santa cap -- and spooned down chocolate mousse.

SO MANY CHRISTMAS lights are glowing around Ron and Vicki Winson's Westminster home that people often ask, "How much more is your electricity bill?"Might be up $80 or $90 a month during the holidays, Ron answers. "But considering the amount of joy the lights bring, it's worth it."More than 25,000 lights surround the Winsons' home.Two angels hang in the trees, curtain lights and icicles hang around the eaves, and the lawn is filled with reindeer, a snowman, a wishing well and a nativity scene.

Baltimore rang in its bicentennial year last night with revelry, singing, dancing and prayer, capped by an Inner Harbor fireworks spectacle."Oh, we're going to party tonight!" yelled Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke at the Harborplace Amphitheatre, just before he counted down the final 10 seconds to midnight.Then, fireworks erupted from two barges and from the tops of the World Trade Center, the Maryland Science Center and Federal Hill against the backdrop of a luminous half-moon hanging low over East Baltimore.

It's 3 p.m. at Shirley's Honey Hole, a neighborhood bar in East Baltimore, and behind a locked door about 10 men - mostly retirees, all in their 60s and 70s - are sipping Budweisers, Coronas and mixed drinks in red plastic cups, a bottle of fruit juice standing by for refills. Behind the bar are family pictures, white Christmas lights - and a letter from the Baltimore Police Department notifying 60-year-old owner Shirley Barner of the department's intention to shut the business down. Police stipulated three incidents from June, including a shooting on the street outside that left five people injured and one dead, and drugs recovered from people inside and outside the bar. On Friday, Barner's bar became the latest city business that police have identified in recent months as a public nuisance, initiating proceedings to padlock the business until the owners can come up with a safety plan deemed suitable by Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. And like the business owners before her, Barner, an East Baltimore bar owner for 30 years, says police are blaming her for something over which she has no control.

Hometown : Frostburg Members: Derek Shank, keyboards and vocals; Josh Grapes, samples, effects, keyboards and vocals; Curt Tompkins, drums and vocals; Kenny Tompkins, guitar and lead vocals Founded : 2006 Style : experimental electro-pop Influenced by : Mum, Deerhoof, Panda Bear Notable: The Christmas Lights is the brainchild of Kenny Tompkins, who recorded the band's debut album, Walk Like a Human, at home by himself. Tompkins recruited Grapes, Shank and his brother, Curt, to perform the pieces live.

Christmas morning finds me, as the song suggests, where the lovelight gleams. I am home for Christmas, and I am not dreaming. Faithful readers know that for all of my adult life, I have returned to Pittsburgh to spend Christmas with my family and my husband's family. My children -- and both made the trip in utero -- have never gone to sleep in their own beds on Christmas Eve and wakened Christmas morning to see what Santa had left beneath their tree. It has always been Grandma's tree.

It's hard to stand out in a wonderland of kitsch, but Jim Pollock does just that. In 1996, the scrap-metal artist made a tiny Christmas tree out of hubcaps. Today, it's 8 feet high, incorporates more than 100 wheel covers and stands in front of his house at 708 W. 34th St. in Hampden, a dented destination of choice for the thousands who crowd his block for the famed miracle of lights every holiday season. They come for his hospitality - he opens his home to visitors, including 30,000 last year - but also for the whimsy in his work.

As you're decorating the house for the holidays, you might notice a little warning label on the strand of lights you're hanging on the window. The label most likely says the lights may contain lead, a known neurotoxin that can be hazardous to your health, or in some cases, deadly. But before you toss those lights out and rush out to buy new ones, realize that regardless of whether the lights are made in China or not, most holiday lights contain some level of lead. The risks, however, can be reduced by washing your hands thoroughly after handling the lights.

The annual tradition at 6428 Deep Calm - where the Colby family illuminated their corner property in Owen Brown with thousands of Christmas lights and eye-catching decorations - has ceased. "It's kind of an end to an era," said Butch Colby, 63. "It's sad, but eventually it had to come to an end." Butch and Barbara Colby, who have been decking out their home each holiday season for 25 years, are preparing to put the property up for sale and move to a retirement community in Carroll County.

JANUARY is a dark time of year, and that makes the debate over the household lights even hotter. These days you can't count on much sunlight for illumination. This week the sun vamoosed shortly after lunch. OK, that is a slight exaggeration. But the irrefutable fact is that when it is dark outside, you gotta turn the lights on inside. While this statement is not exactly brilliant, it is one that makes households quarrel. My home, for instance, is splintered into factions over the burning of the bulbs.

THE NIGHT THE Christmas tree lights went out marked a new, somewhat tense chapter in our family life. The living room was not in a total blackout. It was more of a brownout, or to be precise, a red-, green-, blue- and gold-out. Most of the multi-colored lights on the tree looked deader than baseball in Washington. But one valiant string at the bottom of the tree was still glowing. A partially lit Christmas tree, like a partially dressed Santa, is not a pretty sight. Immediately I suspected sabotage.

Out with the stagnant stuff, the worked-for-a-time-but-now-it's-stale stuff. This area needs some fresh air. Perhaps, while recording their new projects, Diana Krall and the various artists on Neo Soul United 2 had that kind of mind-set. Each performer offers something smarter, more adventurous to jazz and soul -- something more real and nuanced than what we've heard from the genres lately. You already know of Krall. And if Neo Soul United 2 picks up any heat (I certainly hope so), then you will also know about such standout artists as Michael Bohannon, Keith Robinson (aka Black Keith)

In Susanne Varmer's world, there is a place for everything. And with a compact, 1,300- square-foot condominium in the Inner Harbor neighborhood of Otterbein, she makes sure that everything -- including her Orioles memorabilia -- is in its place. Varmer, 52 and a native of Denmark, grew up in the Washington suburbs. It was there that she married and raised a family. Now divorced and with her children grown, Varmer followed a dream eight years ago to live in Baltimore near Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the baseball team she adores.