A favorite tradition during the Christmas season is the placement of lights on your yard and home. Christmas lights are like fireworks that don’t burn out and fall from the sky, but stay bright, as long and often as you wish. Glowing colored lights of all shapes and colors: red, yellow, green, and now even purple, in shapes of stars, balls, icicles, and angels. Trees and bushes are engulfed by multicolored webs, transforming dormant green and brown plants into glowing beacons of electric wizardry. Suddenly, a fog filled and chilly evening has become a scene of Muppets playing in the neighbor’s yard, Charlie Brown and his gang playing baseball on the roof, Santa and his gift filled sleigh rocket to a chimney from a nearby light pole. Scenes of white glowing deer amongst (You guessed it), white glowing circular trees surround the Magnolia Tree in the front yard, and air filled Polar Bears standing along an Igloo – magically rise for the evening show, only to deflate at midnight. Occasionally, a scene of wise men, a man and woman, and a baby find their way onto a yard to tell a different story of light.
Lighting our homes in celebration of Christmas is a beautiful tradition that I hope lives forever. Of course it should, since the tradition has already survived for over two thousand years. The first year there was only one light, but it was fantastically bright, and thought it could be seen by millions, was only noticed by three. It is a light that has never gone out since, and never will.
Have a very Bright and Merry Christmas.
Dastardly Dan Dullard (Dan to his friends) sat at the end of a long wooden bar, the many gouges and burn marks that scarred its surface paid tribute to age of the bar, and its patrons. His worn and beyond-dirty black leather and denim outfit was a tight fit (Dan liked animal style fries with his double cheese burger). He wore a 357 magnum low on his right thigh; the leather holster shined from fresh oil. Although it was barley noon, Dan was finishing his third root beer float, made with real ice cream, fully leaded root beer, (Nothing lite for Dan) and topped with two maraschino cherries. Today, he would need all the courage he could buy. Today, Santa Claus was coming to town.
