A Christmas Eve run to Dyker Heights, Brooklyn

When I was a kid in Aurora, IL, my grandparents lived on Lehnertz Avenue in a neighborhood called Pigeon Hill. Every year at Christmas, since 1951, the neighborhood puts on a Christmas display. One one side of the street, every house has cut outs of shepherds and sheep, on the other (my grandparents') side, "books" telling the nativity story. It all leads up to a crèche of dubious constitutionality in the public park at the end of the street. Buy a house on Lehnertz and you inherit the books or the shepherds in the garage or the basement; they've been using the same displays since the early 60s.

Here in New York, the local Christmas lights neighborhood is Dyker Heights. It's not really a community effort. Instead, it's a handful of families trying to out-Clark-Griswold each other.

Church-and-state quibbles aside, I prefer Lehnertz Ave.

This run was about 12 miles, and crossed through Kensington, Boro Park, and (I think) Bay Ridge.

Merry Christmas and a Happy Hogswatch.

In front of a hot pot restaurant on Fort Hamilton Parkway

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In Dyker Heights. No holiday display—but my what a classy menagerie!

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I find this a little scary...

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In front of a church in Kensington

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