I have always embraced the candles, lights, and lanterns of the season. I have a particular fondness for the multicolour incandescent variety- both miniature and old school individual screw-in lights. The colours bring such joy to such a cold, dark season, when spirits can be low and to do lists rack up faster than you can check off items.
Below, last year’s tree at Mom and Dad’s. A true labour of love that includes 60+ years of ornaments. The rule is every ornament goes on the tree.
Our family’s always loved visiting outdoor lights as well- I still remember the tinsel and light ones down streets and avenues in downtown Edmonton and driving along Candy Cane Lane. On Christmas Eve, as late as 2022 Dad would always drive us around to look at neighbourhood lights with radio music playing.
When Grandma and Grandpa Davies would come to visit for Christmas (or when we’d visit in Winnipeg) Dad would drive us all around on snow covered streets in a packed car. I still chuckle remembering Grandma’s reaction of horror as the verses of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer were revealed. (Oh, Ritchie, how terrible!)
We would be driving around and see all kinds of spectacular bright light displays with motion in all colours, and then pass a subdued house with a few clear lights. My Grandma would always, reliably say “I think I like the clear lights best”.
As an explosion of colour loving granddaughter, I never could understand this perspective. Sometimes it was a single, weak strand of clear lights tossed haphazardly on a bush and she’d still make the same comment. Even the last Christmas when she was terminally ill, many years after my grandpa had passed away, when she was so sick and in pain, we took her for a holiday ride, and she came to the same conclusion – “I think I like the clear lights best of all”, leading to a quiet chuckle.
Too many years have passed since that Christmas and I’m facing my first Christmas without Dad. There will be no tree this year, and for the first time ever, none of the family traditions we enthusiastically carried out over the decades will take place. It is the year of ash. Quiet reflection. Sadness. And that cutting awareness of how much we’ve lost. A few weeks ago I ordered a few strings of lights online. A momentary pause over the multicolour lights- but they weren’t right this year. I settled on the clear. Two strings of clear lights on a fig and bamboo tree – purchased for Dad’s Celebration of Life – adorn our home. This year I like the clear lights best of all.
