Complimentary Story
November/December 2024I love Christmas lights, lots of them. The more the merrier! If you love Christmas lights like I do, then you might want to make a Christmastime trip to my old musical home town of Nashville, Tennessee. There, you can see the Christmas lights at the Opryland hotel with your family…for they’re simply, lovely!
But as much as I love Christmas lights, I must confess that when it comes to stringing them up on the family tree, it’s really not one of my favorite holiday activities or cup of peppermint tea. For after a while of attempting to untangle and fix the old broken strands, I can become “the grinch that stole Christmas,” with an unfettered will to suddenly stuff the tree up the chimney. For it’s far less consternating to me, to go to the store and buy new ones, than waste all my Christmas cheer on broken strands of misery.
“But maybe, just maybe, the old grinch, said to himself… Maybe ‘Christmas light’ doesn’t come from a store or even an evergreen tree.”
Now many of you may know that the origin of the custom of Christmas lights, goes back to when evergreen trees were brought by Christians into their homes, in early modern Germany. That were then decorated with candles, that symbolized Christ, being the “light of the world” and that is why this traditional custom continues to this day.
Now all of us have sweet memories of Christmases past and those twinklin’ Christmas lights, that remind us of a distant, starry silent night. And so, I’ll share with you one of my sweet memories, that occurred during the last month of my late wife’s life here on earth, in her sixteen-month-long battle with metastatic cancer.
Early in the December of 2014, one cold and snowy Wyoming night, my children and I bundled Linda’s frail and fragile body up, carried her out to the car, and drove all over our little frontier town to see the twinklin’ Christmas lights. Now, I’ll never know all of what she was thinking about, with her inability to speak and utter little more than the sound of a few “oohs” and “ahhs.” But I do know this: Those twinklin’ Christmas lights brought her some “tidings of great comfort and joy.” And for a few brief moments…turned all of our sorrow and suffering into grace and glory.
So this Christmas, as you view the twinklin’ Christmas lights, I hope you’ll be reminded that, “Jesus is the light of the world” and begin to, as Charles Dickens said, “…honor Christmas in your heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Merry Christmas!
