Languages in LA

When I was young, we used to exlaim in chagrin that the local stores began erecting their Christmas displays the day after Thanksgiving. We declaimed bitterly the increasing commercialization of Christmas. I think we’ve outgrown the shock. Indeed, now I fully expect to see Christmas lights the day after Halloween and feel a bit cheated if I don’t.

 Los Angeles being basically a shopping town, I have not been disappointed since I moved here three and a half years ago. Sunset Plaza is particularly prompt, and already sparkly blue reindeer are gracefully poised at the intersection by Chin-Chin’s and Café Med.

 Bristol Farms on Doheny has a dazzling display that makes me feel, when I walk in the door, that the world is a blur of red and gold, and smells like cinnamon. All the pumpkins have been moved outside with the firewood and I drift past the orange and into the red as if moving through a rainbow. Somewhere on Melrose I saw a slender, armless mannequin in a store window with a Santa had on. She looked like Venus de Claus.

 The years are neatly divided now into holidays and seasons by the merchant class. There is no dead time. As soon as the Christmas lights are put away, the valentines will appear, to be replaced by shamrocks, then easter eggs, then bikinis, then American flags, then the back-to-school atmosphere will fill that dangerous period from late July to early September with pencils and apples, till it’s time for the pumpkins to return. My year is served up with a fresh new glaze, again and again and again. The store windows of Los Angeles are my calender.