Light It Up!

I love Christmas lights. I really do. They’re bright and shiny. They’re glittery and gaudy. They’re decadent and excessive. And I love ’em! Even in the midst of all my growing dismay over the commercialization and excess of Christmas, I love a good light display. And the bigger, the brighter, the flashier it is, the better it is.

I stand in awe of those people who start in August planning and plotting and laying out miles of extension cords. The amount of organization necessary to make that happen is quite beyond me. But that’s not why I love them. It took me a while to figure it out. But, it occurred to me last night that the real reason I love light displays is the childlike abandon with which they are made.

You would probably never be able to pick out the person with the biggest light display if you saw them walking down the street. These are, for the most part, regular folk who don’t color outside the lines. They are ordinary people with ordinary lives. Except, every year around this time, they get out their magic lite- brite pen and scribble all over the house and yard with gay abandon. They color the house blue and the tree red. They put away their reality and paint things as they see them or wish they were: sparkly and bright.

So, I say, bring out your candy canes and reindeer. Air up your inflatable santas and snowglobes. Splash color and joy all over the place and light it up!

Because I’m watching and I love it!