I kinda wished I’d waited until today to publish my yearly essay of the Darkest Night of the Year and worked this into it, but I generally make a policy of not significantly editing blog entries after I’ve published them, so this will have to stand on its own

A Christmas tradition that has stayed with me since I was a small child is getting in the car and driving around town looking at houses decorated with Christmas lights. Mom and dad would put me and my sister in a car and we’d drive around our neighborhood and maybe venture out into some of the nearby subdivisions. We’d ooh and ahh and marvel at the lights and even stop at some of the more elaborate setups. (You know, the ones with the entire elf village with Santa’s sleigh, right next to a nativity scene, all with “God Bless America” in blinking lights hovering over the whole thing. What a crazy mixture of messages.) Even when I lived in Florida alone, I would get in the car and drive around Boca Raton looking at the palm trees wrapped with Christmas lights. I’ve kept this tradition almost every year.

Adriene and I got our coffee and drove around the base of Kennesaw Mountain. Our favorite neighborhoods are the ones inhabited by the noveau riche. They always seem eager to show how much money they have by putting on as bombastic a display as possible. We always marvel that these gigantic manors are so close to where we live. We certainly don’t have a three car garage (nor a Hummer that won’t fit in that three car garage, either.) There are some tastefully done houses, too, with white icicle lights hanging from the porch or wreaths in the windows. Ribbons and garland across railings and little white lights all around.

I read somewhere that in Anchorage, Alaska, they keep the white Christmas lights on all the houses during the whole winter, when the sun barely rises, all the way until March (“when the last dog from the Iditarod comes home.”) to keep the city lit during the constant winter nights. I liked the imagery of that. A feeble effort to shine out against a cold chill in the world that threatens to envelop. Tiny white lights fighting off the unending darkness until spring finally arrives.