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Originally published Dec. 21, 1998 in the Columbia Daily Herald
By Tim Wood
I love Christmas lights.
At my previous newspaper, I started a contest to determine the best Christmas lighting decorations in the city. It was a lot of work, but it was fun.
Oddly enough, I've never decorated my own house with lights. I'm not much of a handyman and it seems that I'm always too busy.
Lights are symbolic of the Christmas season. We put them on our Christmas trees. They are mounted all over houses and businesses.
A light in the sky led the Wise Men to the infant Jesus. The angels who appeared to the shepherds undoubtedly were a brilliant sight.
In the early 1970s, the so-called "energy crisis" led the government to ask people to cut back on their holiday lighting.
In retrospect, this may not have been a good decision. People already were hurt by soaring gas prices, long lines at gas stations, a drop in the stock market and rampant inflation.
Americans needed some Christmas joy to cheer them up, but instead, the lights went out, and with them, a significant part of the holiday spirit.
Although the government backed off their request, in the communities where I lived, it took some time for people to get back to putting out lights.
One of my sons asked if we could have Christmas lights this year. When a boy looks at you and asks for something relating to Christmas, it's hard to resist.. On a subsequent visit to the grocery store, I picked up a set of lights. I had no idea of how I was going to put them up or how to power them, but I was determined to get something up.
The lights languished in their box for a few days. One day I put the lights up on the front of the house, but did not run power to them.
One night last week I was feeling tired and frustrated. Then I remembered that I had not finished the lights.
So, out came the extension cord, the hammer, a few nails and the ever-useful obligatory duct tape. Some day, geologists are going to get to the center of the Earth and find that the planet is held together with duct tape.
I hammed, taped, eyeballed and fumed a few times, but with the help of another extension cord, there was power to the lights. I plugged them in and, lo, there was light. It was just a simple straight line of lights. But it was my straight line of lights.
Naturally, I had to drag my wife and the boys outside to see my achievement. My wife, Cheryl, made the obligatory fuss over the lights. The boys seemed to like them.
We're not talking Opryland here. There's one solitary string of lights across the front porch. They don't blink or form a pattern. They're just there.
I told Cheryl that we could pick up some lights cheap in the after-Christmas sales and add to them next year. Visions of light decorations danced through my head.
One string of lights isn't much, but by golly, it's a heck of a lot better than nothing. If you're out cruising Columbia, don't look down at the houses that have modest lights. There's a difference between elaborate lighting displays and simple displays, but there's a huge difference between simple displays and no display at all.
Earlier this month, there was much fuss in the press about the alignment of three heavenly bodies.The three planets moved to a position in which they were in a straight line.
I saw them one night as I drove home from Nashville. The dusk sky was a glorious blue. The planets seemed to be the only thing in the sky. As simple as the sight was, it was beautiful.
Perhaps God decided to put up Christmas lights this year, too.
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