It's All About the Lights by Leigh Riker


Christmas is my favorite time of year! What matters most? Being with family, of course (can't do that this year), seeing friends (ditto), and always...Christmas lights. This year the lights will have to do--at the same time they bring me their usual joy.

My love of holiday lights goes way back. When I was a child, one Christmas week my mom got sick, so we hadn't put up our tree. On Christmas Eve, with the town around us silent as a heavy snow came down and with no cars on the road, my dad pulled my little brother and me down the hill to the only tree lot still open. I've never forgotten that snowy sled ride, the special time we spent with my father--or the fact that, once we had the tree home and Dad had strung the lights, for some reason I stuck my finger in a socket! Quite the effective means, I must say, of getting warm after being out in such bad weather. I was too embarrassed to admit that I was glowing all over.

The first year after we married, my husband and I bought a small, scraggly-looking, last-minute tree (this was becoming a tradition) from a stand in midtown Manhattan. Think Charlie Brown. We put the tree on a table in the window of our tiny apartment and thought it was the best, most beautiful thing ever. Ah, the lights!

This season I've just moved and am still surrounded by boxes, so the celebration in this house will be a bit minimalist, but I guarantee there will be lights. And trees to showcase them.

A four-foot tree will decorate my office, in part a tribute to my mother-in-law to whom it belonged. Another little tree I've had forever will take its place again somewhere in my bedroom. I collect even smaller trees too, and each year I try to add another to my ever-growing collection.

I'm thinking too, "Wouldn't it be nice in this new home to sprinkle fairy lights in the fireplace (not when it's being used)?" Christmas trees--and lights, lots of lights--help to make the holiday magical. I like nothing better then than to curl up at night with a nice glass of wine, the room lights off, the mantel and tree all a-glitter in the darkened room. 

Here's another, simple idea: just put a string of lights in pretty bowl.

What's your favorite part of the holidays? However you choose to celebrate, have a wonderful, safe season and a happy, healthy New Year. 2021 has to be better than this one, right?!



Comments

  1. I think home decorating this year will be more important than ever, Leigh. I love your story of your father taking you by sled to get a tree on Christmas Eve so you wouldn't miss out. What a Dad! And the string of lights in the bowl is a great tip...that's on my to-do list now. My favourite part has always been Christmas Eve, when I can sit quietly by the tree before all the busyness (and work!) of the next day. This year there may not be so much work, since family members will be absent. But I'll still have that reflective moment I think. Happy decorating!

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  2. So true, Janice. I think a lot of people decorated for Christmas quite early this difficult year to bring some much-needed cheer to the season. I'm glad you liked that sledding story; it's one of my favorite memories of my dad. That quiet night with no one else around--and us riding down the middle of the deserted, ordinarily busy street--was magic. The string of lights in a bowl is so easy and makes such a pretty decoration. I'd like to put them all over my house! Your reflective moment on Christmas Eve sounds perfect to me. Happy Holidays !

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  3. I love the lights, too! As different as everything is this year, I'm holding onto watching them especially tight.

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  4. I'm surrounded by plastic bins with Christmas decorations. Our tree is up with twinkling lights (they were already on the tree). Some of my ornaments are there. I just found the box with the others and my daughter is itching to put them on. So I'm letting her.

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  5. I love this, especially the story with your dad on Christmas Eve. I'm big on Christmas lights, too. Anchorage developed a "City of Flowers and Lights" campaign years ago that started the tradition of putting up white lights at Christmastime and leaving them up through the dark winter until the last Iditarod musher reaches Nome in early March.

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