Tip of My Iceberg

I’m a sucker for Christmas lights.

With that reality, we’ve never been able to pull off any kind of outside decorative lighting during the holidays because of a genuine ineptness on the part of me and my husband. 

We’ve never figured out how to attach all those random strings to a source of power so they work. All those cords.

Actually, we’ve never taken the time to really work at it. This is one of those areas in life where we deeply appreciate the talents and capabilities of others while quietly confessing to not caring that we have no beautiful Christmas lights.

Our lack of twinkle, however, in no way dampens my delight in seeing homes all over town bring on the bling.

Seeing all these Christmas sparklers reminds me of how much I love light. Not just lighting up a room or a day type of light. But light that obliterates darkness. Light that takes away the fear of what I can’t see or reduces the scare factor of what I can’t identify.

A Christmas cover-up?

The lights of Christmas show the whimsy and color of life. They bedazzle the season. The ones I’m most drawn to are the huge displays. The multitudes of lights. The kaleidoscope of color.

It’s why I really don’t want to attempt to do lights at our house. We’d have to buy a bunch. Figure out how to put them up so they look good. Connect them in such a way that you don’t see or trip over a bunch of extension cords, because that just looks tacky.

Quite frankly, I don’t have the energy, the time or the ability to do this. So the lightless look has been our holiday house of choice.

And yet, I think of Christmas in this same way. Unless it’s done big–make the 100 different kinds of cookies in the women’s magazine, craft homemade gifts for friends and neighbors, decorate with fresh pine boughs from the Christmas tree lots where dozens are scattered on the ground–it’s not enough.

Exhausting, right?

That’s not what Christmas was meant to be. I think that we’ve moved so far from the real meaning–wanting to call it a “winter holiday” rather than use the word “Christmas”–that we feel the need to fill it up with things that look special and significant to make it important enough to celebrate.

Christmas is all about the One Light.

“The Word (Jesus) gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought LIGHT to everyone. The LIGHT shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”  John 1:4-5

We do a lot to fill our lives with light. To be able to see. To do our jobs. To be able to recognize and interact with those we care about.

But the real Light came to extinguish the darkness once and for all. To allow us to see what needs to be seen. The true Light we need in our hearts.

And when that Light came, it changed everything.

First photo courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net.

Second photo courtesy of connecticut.cbs.local.com.

Third photo courtesy of hdwallpapers4free.com