Quiet Splendor

By Beth Yarbrough

Christmas lights are a thing these days. Have you noticed? Well, of course you have. I might as well be asking if you noticed that the sun came up this morning.

Harking back to when I was a child, however, I can say with authority that today’s illumination fad would put even Clark W. Griswold to shame. Then again, maybe he is to blame. If there is a household that does not watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at least once during the season, I don’t know of it.

To be sure, we have always loved “big” at Christmas. Rockefeller Center comes to mind. And all over the world there are cities, towns and villages that have been known for their spectacular light shows for half a century or longer.

But it seems to me that in recent years, the neighborhoods have caught on. Entire houses are completely enrobed in lights, many of them on timers that connect to music and somehow flash and wiggle and strobe to the beat. The lights themselves also extend out onto the lawn, where wire-framed figures of twinkling snowmen, Santas, reindeer, gingerbread men, and Grinches stand guard and dance along.

Add to that (while I am on the subject) a whole new genre of inflatables that pop up every year after Thanksgiving like giant mushrooms that got lost on their way to Disneyland and just decided to bloom where they landed. Some of them - many of them, actually, are as tall as two-story houses.

But back to the lights, I’m writing this because I remembered December nights from long ago. There was a quiet splendor then that I’m not finding very much of today.

I grew up in the small-town South, one of three siblings in a baby-boomer family. In my neighborhood alone, within a three or four block radius, there were more than 60 children. Each house had a tree with beautiful lights, most likely a wreath on the door, and often an ivy-sheathed lamp post with a red bow.

At least once during late December, Daddy would pile us into the back seat of the family car and we would go for a nighttime drive around town to look at the lights. Not surprisingly, most all of the neighborhoods we visited were just like ours - lovely homes with a lit tree in the window and a glowing lamp post at the street. Every now and then we would run across an exuberant soul who had decorated an evergreen tree growing in the yard with lights. And, of course, Main Street was all aglow.

But what I remember most about those December nights was the quiet splendor. We never encountered light shows or giant green Grinches leering at us from 20 feet in the air. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra did not treat us to a full-volume laser light extravaganza every time we turned a corner onto a new street.

Instead, the houses that we passed all spoke the same message of peace and contentment. I miss those days.

Christmas is a time of celebration, and if your idea of spreading that joy is to string a million lights and set the whole thing to music, or even find every inflatable and plant them all on your lawn, then that is what you should do with no apologies to me or anyone else. Joy To The World can be spoken in a million different ways, each of them bearing some kind of meaning to their owners.

But along with that, if you can find just one evening to go out and look up at a crystal clear December night sky, I would encourage that as well. God knows a thing or two about stringing lights himself.