Beth Touchette reflects on her family’s tradition of hanging Christmas lights.
Every December, my father would wind a string of the large bulbs, blue only, around one pine tree at the far edge of our back yard. The display required a 50-ft heavy duty extension cord. When the automatic lights switched on at 5 PM, a silhouette of the pine branches glowed against the dark sky.
Bright blue light reflected off the snow. The multicolored blinking lights our neighbors put around their windows reminded me of summer carnivals, but the blue lights created a magical Christmas realm. Dad’s lights transported me from upstate New York, where I was an introverted elementary school student, to a slightly scary pine filled wilderness where reindeer flew, snowmen came to life, and a kind old man made and delivered toys to children all over the world.
I grew up, and my parents moved to Colorado. I would arrive exhausted from college finals, boyfriend break-ups, challenging first jobs, and perennially overcrowded flights, but then I would look out the window and see the blue lights against the tree and snow. I would feel like I was home and ready for the holidays. Later at night, after my parents went to bed, I would stare at the lights and sometimes cry.
When my husband and I bought a house in Fairfax, I placed blue lights around our car deck. The puddles of rain below the lights did not provide the same generous reflection as newly fallen snow. My father is now in his 80s. The spruce in the backyard has become too tall for him to cover with lights without placing a ladder in the icy snow.