New Mexico Light

The first thing you hear in the Albuquerque airport is the silence, the loud, noisy, implacable silence which persists everywhere you go in New Mexico, in restaurants, galleries, the open road through desert vegetation, tribal dances.

The silence clings to everything like the Christmas wreaths that wrap around every tree and post and wall, the Christmas lights that fill the plazas, a festive symphony you only see in Union Square in San Francisco.

And that, more than anything, is the image I took away most from our trip to New Mexico: a full-hearted embrace of Christmas. Perhaps it is the heavy Catholic influence in the history of New Mexico, but Christmas is a big deal. There is Las Posadas, the procession around the Santa Fe Plaza, re-enacting Joseph and Mary's quest for shelter and their dismissal by red-clothed devil-figures who hammed up their refusals which drew hisses and boos from the crowd, all illuminated by the lanterns of candles held by sand or stone in brown bags that are called alternately luminarias, farolitos, or--tongue-in-cheek by some locals--bagolitos.



There are the Christmas lights wrapped around crosses at an old sanctuary, the lights looking quite remarkably like thorns. You may or may not believe in the pageantry and tenets of religion, but they are undeniably powerful images.






There are the town squares decorated to the nines, including in the small town of Taos, with a lovely little tree, and the plaza in Santa Fe with the covered walkways in front of the busy stores, all glittering in lights and slanted sun and greenery.




And of course, there was the artsy town of Madrid--pronounced MAD-rid--the resurrected coal-mining town with a Santa Claus walking up and down the twilit street, greeting one and all, Clydesdale-driven wagon-rides, strings of lights across the street, and, most importantly of all, a stuffed bison head wearing a Santa hat.



If there is anything more festive for Christmas than a bison wearing a Santa hat, I don't know what it is.

It isn't to say that Christmas is not important in San Francisco. There are lovely light displays to be found, but overall, the spirit seems more diluted, and perhaps even a bit lost. I am not a religious man, but I have to say I felt dissatisfied ever since we returned from the desert, a feeling like Christmas was not actually upon us. It was a feeling I didn't really shake until I took the train to Sacramento on Christmas Eve and drove around the neighborhoods with Marina and her mom, looking at the elaborate decorations and light displays, much as I used to do with Dad and Rosie while Mom was home creating a Christmas Eve treasure hunt.

After that, I felt fully in the Christmas spirit, especially once I received some lovely gifts, including two volumes of the complete Peanuts collections. Honestly, I realized that one of the reasons I still love Peanuts is that it represents a piece of the American mythos that I can still embrace without reservation. It is innocence, but not naive innocence; a celebration of baseball and childhood and Christmas without viewing childhood through rose-colored glasses. There is a poignancy to the Peanuts comics that allow them to transcend the medium and avoid becoming preachy or trite, at least for the most part.

There is a simple, empty and clear place you can come to in your thoughts as you read Peanuts, which is similar to the quiet I felt at times in New Mexico.

Epiphany or not, though, I don't intend to move to either New Mexico or Sacramento. Too far away from the ocean, both of them. Lovely light, and lovely memories, but that is enough.