Christmas Decorations

For the past four years, Gary Endicott has encased his Newbury Park home with enough tiny, blinking Christmas lights to make the whole block glow. Scores of children from throughout the county have flocked to his frontyard for a glimpse inside his window to behold a spectacular display--moving elves making toys, Mr. and Mrs. Claus carrying candles and mechanical skiers gliding down snow-capped slopes.

"Shine, Give, Share" is the theme for Christmas at the White House, whose doors were flung open Wednesday to the first wave of guests given the chance to ogle its fragrant, fanciful holiday finery, including no fewer than 37 trees. Before the fun stuff, somber notes. A tree dedicated to fallen troops and decorated by "Gold Star Families" rises near the entryway through which 85,000 holiday visitors are expected. PHOTOS: White House Christmas Decorations The tree is aglow with gold-rimmed white stars honoring individual dead, and next to it a large monitor flashes their pictures, short biographies and messages from the families left behind.

A visitor to the Fashion Show mall in Las Vegas the weekend before Thanksgiving would have been confronted with a casino-worthy winter wonderland tableaux that included two 25-foot-tall half-woman, half-ornament holiday hybrids dripping in red velvet and blindingly bedazzled with feathers, sequins and jewels; a 36-foot, Lalique-inspired Christmas tree with a 5-foot snow-burst topper; and 12-foot wreaths that dazzled like diamonds. Sin City, where clocks and calendars barely exist and tomorrow is a nebulous concept at best, had already seen the curtain of Christmastide open for another season.

I'm driving down the 101 the other day, a Friday, so it's basically moving along at the speed of shopping carts, when the freeway message sign flashes, "15 MINUTES TO GLENDALE. " I get all excited because, obviously, being that close to Glendale is a very thrilling thing. In fact, that might be the title of my next play: "15 MINUTES TO GLENDALE. " I like the sense of anticipation it promises. Far as I know, no playwright has explored the angst inherent in living in a town hemmed in by Burbank and Pasadena.

I'm driving down the 101 the other day, a Friday, so it's basically moving along at the speed of shopping carts, when the freeway message sign flashes, "15 MINUTES TO GLENDALE. " I get all excited because, obviously, being that close to Glendale is a very thrilling thing. In fact, that might be the title of my next play: "15 MINUTES TO GLENDALE. " I like the sense of anticipation it promises. Far as I know, no playwright has explored the angst inherent in living in a town hemmed in by Burbank and Pasadena.

An extension cord overloaded with Christmas decorations may have sparked a fire that swept through four row houses in Allentown, killing five people and injuring several others, officials said. The holiday decorations had been plugged into a power strip joined to an extension cord, said Allentown Fire Capt. Robert Scheirer.

In an effort to protect residents from a horde of motorists seeking to view Christmas decorations in the area, the City Council on Tuesday will consider temporarily banning parking on some streets near Heil Avenue and Brookhurst Street. Sycamore, Filbert and Shadbush streets and Dandelion and Gladiola avenues are among the streets being considered for restrictions from Dec. 19 to 24.

The Feliz Navidad Project has brought Christmas to families living in six housing projects this year. "We're sort of a traveling circus from one project to the other," said Henry Gonzalez, who dressed up as Santa and delivered toys to about 6,000 children. "What is really unique is that that toy may be the only toy that child receives this Christmas."

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. You can't say that stuff anymore. You can't even say Jesus anymore. You have to say "holiday infant."-- JAY LENO * To our Christian viewers, I want to say Merry Christmas. To our Jewish viewers, Happy Hanukkah. To our African American viewers, Happy Kwanzaa. To our viewers working at Wal-Mart, Feliz Navidad. -- LENO * It's so different out here in California.

Jane Fickling lives in Dallas, but with the holiday looming, she undertook a cross-country decorating job in Orange County. Armed with a Christmas tree, a nutcracker, a poinsettia and some other seasonal favorites, Fickling swept into her 95-year-old father's apartment last week to add a little holiday cheer. "He's always so happy when I come," says Fickling, a Delta Airlines employee. "And I'm happy to be with him. The Christmas decorations were a plus for both of us. " Her dad, Burtis Taylor, lives in Regents Point, a retirement community in Irvine.

A visitor to the Fashion Show mall in Las Vegas the weekend before Thanksgiving would have been confronted with a casino-worthy winter wonderland tableaux that included two 25-foot-tall half-woman, half-ornament holiday hybrids dripping in red velvet and blindingly bedazzled with feathers, sequins and jewels; a 36-foot, Lalique-inspired Christmas tree with a 5-foot snow-burst topper; and 12-foot wreaths that dazzled like diamonds. Sin City, where clocks and calendars barely exist and tomorrow is a nebulous concept at best, had already seen the curtain of Christmastide open for another season.

If there's one thing I dislike more than the rampant commercialization of Christmas, it's everybody complaining about the rampant commercialization of Christmas. Yes, I realize you may have seen Christmas decorations at your local Walgreens well before Halloween this year. And yes, the cheesy Christmas music playing in Starbucks and my barbershop and everywhere else annoys me too. (Frankly, that Mommy-kissing-Santa-Claus song gives me the creeps.) But please spare me the gauzy romanticization of some pure, pre-commercial American Christmas past.

I am sitting here in a morose mood, wondering why things are the way they are in a world that seems to be spinning in reverse, when suddenly there is a loud crash from the other room, followed by a yowl of surprise and a howl of pain. These are not unfamiliar sounds in a household that combines humans and domestic animals in a post-Christmas mode. I say post-Christmas because, even though it is February, we are just now getting around to putting away the seasonal decorations.

An extension cord overloaded with Christmas decorations may have sparked a fire that swept through four row houses in Allentown, killing five people and injuring several others, officials said. The holiday decorations had been plugged into a power strip joined to an extension cord, said Allentown Fire Capt. Robert Scheirer.

TINY red-and-green Christmas lights snake up a railing above the "for sale" sign in front of a home in the Hollywood Hills. More lights twinkle from the roof and the trees on the front lawn. Inside, a Christmas tree sporting tiny candy canes stands waiting for Santa, and cranberry-scented candles alternate with clusters of red and white poinsettias along the mantle in the living room. A second tree, decorated with white snowflakes, is in the dining room.

In a tiny factory in the Manila slum district of Navotas, the 100 employees of Teano International Export are helping to prove that Christmas may provide a partial solution to the Philippines' economic crisis. For the past year, workers at the factory and hundreds of others who work for Teano in shacks and shanties throughout metropolitan Manila have been transforming jungle vines into Christmas wreaths, grass into Christmas trees and a fibrous plant called abaca into archangels.

Four weeks before Christmas, a sign went up in Roger Freeman's front yard proclaiming, "Santa stops here." But Sunday afternoon, a brazen burglar came calling instead. While the white-bearded Freeman was doubling as jolly ol' St. Nick at a Chino flea market, someone broke out the front window of his home and made off with a VCR.

THE two daughters of "Deck the Halls" production designer Bill Brzeski recently asked him what the family would be doing for Christmas lights this year. His answer was simple and resolute: "I said, 'We are not doing anything. I have done Christmas lights for my life now.'

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. You can't say that stuff anymore. You can't even say Jesus anymore. You have to say "holiday infant."-- JAY LENO * To our Christian viewers, I want to say Merry Christmas. To our Jewish viewers, Happy Hanukkah. To our African American viewers, Happy Kwanzaa. To our viewers working at Wal-Mart, Feliz Navidad. -- LENO * It's so different out here in California.