MonkeyPants

Christmas Lights.

They are a symbol of all things good about humanity, to me. At Christmas time, people decorate the fronts of their houses with lights. Not so that they can enjoy them in their cozy homes, but so they can bring light to the darkness outside.

Christmas is a winter festival. It’s the time of year when our ancestors huddled together for warmth and prayed to whatever deity they believed in, that light would come back, that the sun would return. Dark times, indeed, when you didn’t know if you’d preserved enough food, didn’t know if you’d be snowed in for weeks, didn’t know if the baby or if Grandma would survive the cold, cold nights.

These days, teetering on the dizzy edge of a new century, we know that the sun will come back. We know the seasons roll like a wheel and in six months or so, we’ll be wearing tank tops and sweating. But we still light the lights. Inside our homes, we build cheery fires, plug in the Christmas tree, and gather together for companionship and food. But we light the lights outside, as well. We do it for others’ enjoyment, because we really aren’t doing it for the electrical bills. We do it because we love the season and all the tacky love it brings. But we also do it to shine a little light into the darkness. To shout out, “Hey! We’re here! We’re alive!” To bellow into the darkness that we can hold it at bay.