Lights of the Season

Ever since the three kings used the Star of Bethlehem to find their way to the stable, lights have been part of the Christmas tradition. Brightly colored strings of lights are part of everyone's Christmas memories - along with the annual struggle to unravel the wires, the search for the burned-out bulbs, and the often-exciting spectacle of parents teetering atop ladders and clutching gutters as they hung the lights on rooftops.

One of the newer Christmas lights tradition is the drive-through light festival. Parks, towns, and attractions convert their grounds into wonderlands of sparkling lights - all shaped into symbols of the season and often animated. Reindeer gallop across dark fields, elves hammer toys into shape, angels blow trumpets, and Santas wave at passers-by.

Near water, the lights come to the viewers, as ports host floating light parades. Skippers turn their boats into floats, with the shimmering lights creating scenes that drift silently past spectators on shore.

Communities with strong ethnic traditions light up in different ways. In the Southwest, luminarias dot the landscapes. These are small bags with lighted candles lining pathways and sidewalks. In a few enthusiastic communities, the entire shopping district uses luminarias instead of electric lights to decorate their stores.

While the tradition of holiday lights started with the Wise Men, nobody is exactly sure just what the Star was, actually. Most scholars think the Nativity did not occur in December at all. The early Christian church took over the season to get rid of competition from pagan tribes celebrating the winter solstice. So those who look to the December sky for some unusual astral symbol are looking in all the wrong places at all the wrong times.

The pagans get credit for the inspiration behind the Christmas tree, too. Evergreen boughs were offered to the sun god on the winter solstice as a way of winning favor and ending the long, dark days of winter. The tradition of the Yule Log started around that time, too - although it was probably called something like the Solstice Smolder, since Yuletide was still a few centuries in the future. Back then, fires burned on the hearth all the time, all year long. Large logs were used in the winter, when wood was often wet and it was too cold to spend much time in the forest felling trees. The biggest log was used during the darkest, coldest time, of course. Some people gave the practical practice a more symbolic sense, by claiming that - for good luck and good blessings - the first fire of the new year had to come from the last light of the old year.

The evergreens eventually evolved into the Christmas tree. One tradition says that is was originally called the "Paradise Tree" - an evergreen decorated with apples and used in a play about Adam and Eve that was performed in medieval Germany. Another version is that Martin Luther dragged a tree home one night and decorated it with candles to show his children what stars looked like in the forest at night.

However it started, medieval Martha Stewarts soon decorated the trees with fruits, nuts, paper decorations, and candles. While they were beautiful, the candles were not particularly safe. Flickering flames among the evergreen boughs all-too-often literally lit up the tree - and the room, and sometimes the entire house. Electric lights replaced the candles as soon as they were invented.

At times, it seems that there are as many Festivals of Lights as there are Santas at shopping malls. But each one has something that makes it special - from a park in Los Angeles visited by snowmen to a pier in Annapolis where Santa docks his sled.

Here are some of the more special holiday light displays, as well as a few extra-special holiday season events:
-0-