Christmas in Las Vegas: Now, it’s officially home

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, Dec. 20, 2015 | 2 a.m.

I told my brother first. Most of the news that comes from me to the family is market-tested on my younger brother, Bill, who lives with his family in Boise. If I need some verbal editing before issuing the final version to our parents, Bill is good for that.

“I’m spending Christmas in Las Vegas this year,” I told him. “How does that sound to you?”

“Home,” he said. “You’re spending Christmas at home. It’s where you live, right?”

Right.

“So you’re staying home for Christmas.”

The rite of the holidays always has been that I spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with my family in the dual Idaho cities of Pocatello and Boise. Dad’s in Pocatello, the old railroad town 2 1/2 hours north of Salt Lake City on Interstate 15 that is my hometown. Boise is where most of the clan has gravitated over the years, where Mom and Bill and aunts and uncles and cousins now live.

Since I moved to Las Vegas in 1996, the holidays have been the one pocket of time when I hit pause as a Las Vegan. It’s like an intermission of my residency here, as if I am taking a brief break before wading back into the theater that is VegasVille.

For all of my affection for Las Vegas, I had not fully embraced the holiday spirit here until this year. There was no catalyst for my staying in Las Vegas, either. Somehow, the thought of crisscrossing Idaho in the teeth of winter storms to spend the holidays in Pocatello and Boise simply was abhorrent.

Idaho is a place where you have to respect the weather; dealing with whiteouts and black ice makes you forget the region’s Winter Wonderland real quick.

I warmed to the idea of staying in Las Vegas in November, during the Ethel M Cactus Garden lighting event. The cactus garden is plugged in every year with an event hosted by a media personality, this year Mercedes Martinez from Mix 94.1. The event has featured entertainment from Zowie Bowie, George Wallace, Mo5aic, Michael Grimm and the like. This year, it was Human Nature and the Jabbawockeez, joined by choirs from Sin City Opera, Coronado High School and Schofield Middle School.

I surveyed the cold, yet warming, scene and noted to Andrew Tierney, one of the guys from Human Nature, that I’d first seen his group sing at a cactus lighting six years earlier. Over the years, the Ethel M lighting has become a favorite holiday tradition for me.

“I know what you mean,” Tierney said as a half-million lights glowed around us. “We’ve all moved our families to Las Vegas, and we love it.”

Since that night, I’ve visited Opportunity Village’s wondrous Magical Forest and attended Chet Buchanan’s KLUC 98.5 Toy Drive in the NV Energy parking lot, where 5,783 bicycles were donated and $430,315 was raised for needy families in Las Vegas. Just this week, I swung through the weekly charity show “Monday’s Dark” at the Joint at the Hark Rock Hotel and the annual Marines Reserve Toys For Tots charity show at Orleans Arena. All of these events are reminders of the powerful and often-overlooked philanthropic spirit of Las Vegas.

Yet I have no idea how it will feel to be in my home city on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I sometimes slip into the cliché Vegas ideal that I’ll be bellied up to a craps table at Circus Circus, wearing a Santa cap and a Grinch-ian scowl. But I always chide visitors for not understanding the city’s human qualities, and I look forward to a warm and cozy holiday in the town I’ve grown to love over the decades.

All that was left was to explain this to Mom.

“So,” I started. “I’ve decided to stay home for Christmas this year.”

“Awww, really?” she asked, chuckling. “Well, it’s about time.”