Christmas Lights

Just a few more days and it will be Christmas once again. A practise that is common in Australia that I have not seen anywhere else is the custom of decorating ones house and garden with hundreds of coloured lights. They really go for it in a big way here. The decorations range from a couple of lights or a string of tinsel festooning one of the trees in the garden to very elaborate and I should imagine very costly displays.

Our local paper even publishes a list and a map of the best of the decorations so that parents can take the children on a tour of all the lights before Christmas. Some of the householders have been putting up their displays for many years. They started as just a small token but have been added to each year and now rival New York’s Time Square or London’s Oxford Street.

The imagination and ingenuity is amazing. There are lights everywhere – along the roof, up and down the walls, in the trees, on the driveway, the gate and the chimney. If the house has a chimney one can be pretty sure that there will be a huge blow up Father Christmas climbing into it. Or sometimes going in head first with his black boots sticking up into the air. Another popular feature is the sleigh and all the reindeers – these can be bought in the shops- wire frames in the shape of the sleigh and reindeers with coloured lights attached to them. Some have a series of lights that flash on and off so that the reindeers’ legs appear to be moving and one can see them galloping along the roof top. The shops also sell Nativity scenes, snowmen, Santa’s little elves, fairies, stars, letters that spell out “Merry Christmas”, wishing wells and loads of other things to delight the heart of the dedicated decorator. These displays must be very time consuming to erect and must cost a great deal of money besides the cost of the electricity it must take to power it all. I can’t help feeling a little concerned about the sanity of people who are so dedicated to this time and money consuming pastime.

There are competitions for the best but I have no idea how they are judged, it would be very hard to pick the winners. Many of them have figures that move, maybe snowmen that sing or reindeers that Jingle their bells. If you would like to see some of the winning entries go to
http://express-advocate-gosford.whereilive.com.au/photos/gallery/show-us-your-lights-winners/

I like to go and look but I am more interested in the looks on the faces of the little children as the lights flash and sparkle and they see all their favourite Christmas characters depicted and I feel a nice warm Christmassy feeling towards all the people who put so much effort into bringing such delight to the children. Merry Christmas and God’s richest blessings to them all.


And to you too.

A Very Happy Christmas from

Marina