Tale Sees Heart Of Misguided Christmas Spirit

It ended up having 175,000 lights.

And, if you can imagine, that was the scaled-down version of the Christmas display set in the front yard of Mitzi and William Jennings Bryan Osborne of Little Rock, Ark.

The Osbornes had gone all the way to the Supreme Court to make a case for their former lighted extravaganza, which had attracted sightseers from miles around. But when the neighbors began to complain, the law stepped in.

And then the court followed. Enough, the justices said, is enough.

Amazing, isn’t it, the emotions that Christmas can arouse in some of us?

In his new book, “The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza,” children’s author-illustrator David Shannon explores the development of such a yard display. Following an idea taken from the headlines, Shannon imagines an exhibition that grows from a single set of white lights to a miniature Christmas-themed Disney World and, in the process, becomes a testament to one man’s misplaced sense of holiday spirit.

Shannon, a former Spokane resident who attended Saint George’s School, will present his book from 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Children’s Corner Bookshop.

And when he does, he may share stories of the man who lives near the Burbank, Calif., home that Shannon shares with his wife, Heidi.

Fiction traditionally derives from a variety of sources. In Shannon’s case, he combined the personality of his real-life neighbor with a case such as the one that occurred in Arkansas, which entails a neighborhood rebelling against an outlandish Christmas spectacle.

“The only difference is that he is a beloved figure in our neighborhood,” Shannon said. “There is no angry crowd getting after him.”

In the book, Shannon has his protagonist - a Mr. Merriweather - begin merely as a good man celebrating Christmas with his wife and children. But when a neighbor makes fun of the single strand of lights that he tacks around his front window, Mr. Merriweather gets motivated.

Before long he has installed enough lights and life-size reindeer to attract all his neighbors’ admiration. But he doesn’t stop there.

He builds a yard-size representation of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” complete with maids-a-milking and lords-a-leaping, all accompanied by the song steadily playing its repetitive tune.

But even that doesn’t please him. Ignoring his family, which is beginning to wonder about his sanity, Mr. Merriweather ends up constructing a full Santa’s workshop, complete with elves toiling away, a giant snowman made of Styrofoam and, as the coup de grace, “a 50-foot Santa Claus with a mechanical arm that waved.”

It’s then that the neighbors, tired of the long lines of cars that continually creep slowly around their cul de sacs, rebel. And Mr. Merriweather, and his neighbors as well, are left to ponder the real meaning of Christmas.

Which, as Shannon said, is that “the spirit of Christmas is really in the love of friends and family.”

While he has a message to impart, however, Shannon doesn’t come down hard on his characters. Not on Mr. Merriweather, he says, “because he’s not trying to hurt anybody.” And not on the neighbors either, he adds, because “I didn’t want to get into a whole bunch of moralizing. I don’t think that’s my place.”

Moralizing is a sore temptation for anyone, but especially for children’s authors. When you write stories aimed at the innocent among us, you could be forgiven a bit of well-meaning didacticism.

Yet Shannon is as good as most at avoiding the solemn nod of judgment. He managed that feat in the book that has won him his greatest fame so far, “How Georgie Radbourne Saved Baseball,” which the New York Times named as one of the 10 Best Illustrated Books of 1994.

And he did so even in the retelling of the Arthurian legend “Gawain and the Green Knight,” which he teamed up with his older brother Mark to do. Writer Mark, who now lives in Barcelona, provided the words and David the illustrations.

The “Gawain” book, though, did offer Shannon a challenge.

“Mark and I had kicked around the idea of doing a children’s book for a long time,” he said. The idea, which Shannon’s editor approved of, was to do a book on the legend of Beowulf.

“So I told him (David) to get moving, and two weeks later ‘Gawain’ showed up,” Shannon said with a laugh.

The legend of “Gawain,” which is a study of the knight’s famed integrity, apparently captured his brother’s imagination. But Shannon was able to adjust his own conception, especially as he hadn’t yet done the illustrations.

“Generally,” he explained, “that’s the way you do it. About the biggest problem with a children’s book is will the text fit into 32 pages neatly. It’s kind of like a puzzle.”

It was no real puzzle for him to do “The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza,” which features snowy landscapes and frost-covered houses, despite that fact that he now lives in sunny California. He remembers plenty of white Christmases from the years he lived in Spokane.

As for living in a more temperate climate, Shannon admits that Southern California holiday yard displays are a welcome reminder of his childhood.

“Thank God that people decorate their houses,” he said. “Otherwise you’d never know it was Christmas.”

His real-life neighbor, though, doesn’t quit there.

“His real forte is Halloween,” Shannon said. “We always have to buy a bunch of candy because he brings them in from far and wide.”

As for Mr. Merriweather, the final page of “The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza” indicates that he, too, has a lingering desire to again fire up his artistic generator.

“Maybe I should have ended it with a question mark,” Shannon said.

Or perhaps a courtroom scene.

, DataTimes