This week while I was at home, I took a drive around unfamiliar parts of my neighborhood to see some Christmas light displays at night. I live in the suburbs and am relatively close to the town center, so there are lots of directions I can choose. While I am generally familiar enough with the entire neighborhood not to get lost, there are tons of streets that I've never been down, and that's what I targeted tonight.
As I recall, the first Christmas lights I saw in my neighborhood appeared the day after Thanksgiving - meanwhile, we don't even have our tree up yet. As I slowly navigated my neighborhood's back roads at night, I marveled at just how many houses were lit up with Christmas spirit even in less populated areas. One of my favorite parts of Christmas is simply seeing the decorations everywhere - although I could do without being bombarded by holiday tunes.
Some houses were the basic white lights, which I appreciate, as I find too many rainbow-colored Christmas lights to be garish unless they're artfully arranged. I am a fan of the fake moving light-lined reindeer, which a few yards had. And still some had designs on the side of the house or the garage door, like a giant lit up Jewish star in one case. I spent a lot more time than I intended traveling around these unfamiliar streets and wondering about the people who lived in them. It reminded me of the love I have for taking walks in unfamiliar places - there are endless small, beautiful things you might see, even though it was night now and I could only really make out the lights. There was a sense of community and celebration I got from seeing so many decorated houses - not religious celebration (in my case) but a generally united feeling. This, more than anything else, truly got me into the "Christmas spirit" this year.
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