I’m not really into the whole Christmas holiday thing.  Or any holiday for that matter.  But this year is special since I’m getting used to my new, old locale.  And since it’s still t-shirt weather here in SoCal, I’d better grab the season-ality some other way.  When I was growing up here, we’d always go to Candy Cane Lane:  a block where people decked out their houses with lights & displays.  Alas, Ventura did away with the tradition sometime in the 1990s.  But there are two places in Ventura County that continue the tradition.

Oxnard features a 10 block residential loop.  It’s not quite the same as the days when I was growing up.  Most of the decorations were homemade then and there was more music and animated pieces.  Now, there are lots of cartoon characters and repetitive, store-bought stuff.  Although the animated dripping icicles are really neat.

This house is definitely the star of the show on the Oxnard loop.  There was live entertainment — a woman with a very good voice singing Christmas songs.  She’s responsible for me actually getting “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” stuck in my head tonight.  There was also a popcorn machine passing out cups to the crowd.  Those are palm tree trunks on the left encircled with lights.

Some other pretty displays:  (I’m noticing that WordPress has messed with its photo uploading feature and that sometimes it takes three clicks to get to the larger version of these photos — sorry bout that.  I’ll see if I can’t get it resolved soon.)

 

Oxnard also decorates the big pine tree in the main square for the holidays.  It ain’t the Rockefeller Center tree — but I think I like it all the more for its small town feel.  Here’s the glamour shot:

And a reality shot with more light showing the tree, the palms, people, etc.:

 

I also checked out the Camarillo version of Candy Cane Lane this week.  Much smaller than the one in Oxnard.  So small I walked this one with the dogs which was really more fun than driving.  Some excerpts.  This bear and tree and inflatables get repeated at many houses — but still pretty:

 

A unique display with a vintage Thunderbird in the driveway.  Santa in the driver’s seat and Rudolph in the passenger seat:

 

And I appreciate the effort and homemade-ness of this one:

I hope you enjoyed this post in lieu of a Christmas card from the dogs and I.  Thank you for all your support during our cross-country move.