Christmas Lights (41)

I became accustomed this winter to walking in the dark, in my own neighborhood and in the route returning from my creek path. I learned not to stop myself from taking my hour-long walk, or the longer hour and a half version, only because I had waited until it was too late to get home before dark. I learned to go anyway, and my reward was walking in the midst of all the Christmas lights. My reward was not walking in the dark after all.

It stretched out over weeks, watching new decorations appear little by little. Each time it was a surprise, an unlooked for pleasure when a new house was now alight with glowing color. I always appreciate the small, simple touches the most, like the house whose front door awning was framed in big colored lights, one short strand, while their Christmas tree in the nearby window was lit with white lights. One house had only one green strand of lights looped and neatly twisted through a wall in their front yard. But the folks who go all out, even if it becomes too crazed, too tasteless for me, still get my nod for their effort, for their enthusiasm. And my favorite this year was a house where they did go all out, adorning more than I would have adorned, using more colors than I would have chosen, though it still worked. But their genius lay, I thought, in the bright red strings of lights they wrapped with love around the three palm trees clustered in their front yard. I detoured past their home on almost every walk I took in December, hoping to get a glimpse of the three trees, bold and bright and beautiful.

When the new year begins, almost all of them disappear overnight, some odd unspoken rule, I think. Does Emily Post weigh in on this? But I have always felt an affinity for those of us who break the rule, who let our lights slip on into January, who let them linger. I have a secret belief I would like the people who live in these houses where the quiet glow of the lights is still visible on the 10th of January. If you round the corner on my block, you will see my own little cluster of multi-colored lights, a solar string I've wound into the hedge. I wonder if anyone walking by this evening imagines they would like me, too. Rule breakers, yes, but more, I think--lovers of light, of color, of shiny things that lift the heart and feed the soul.