T’is the season for Christmas lights. All white, blue-white [ick], multi-colored. Lights around trees, lights in trees, lights on roof-lines*, lights around doors, lights in places it probably wasn’t safe to put them . . .
One nice thing about walking at night, as I do, is that I get to see lots and lots of light displays. There’s the house with the dinosaurs, the flamingo porch, the Peanuts™ palace, the guy with the pink peacock, the over-achiever, the guy who got a phone call from the FAA**, and so on. Different fads and displays have come and gone, although ropes of LEDs still seem popular. I liked the oversized glowing ornaments in trees, but wind and fragility seems to have reduced their popularity in the neighborhood. Oh, and of course the white-lights on the wire deer. Who can omit those?
There are two houses, that, although they have changed hands, the lights remained. They are both unusual designs for this area, and the decorations were done custom for the houses. As a result, apparently they were part of the package when the houses sold. The new owners dutifully put the decorations up, much to the joy of the rest of us. Alas, the polar bears (wire frames with lights and scarves) succumbed to age and were retired. The “electrolitos”*** are still there, still going strong, and still neat to see.
New this year are ornaments in ornaments. These are yard decorations in the shape of glass balls. The outer part is a wire cage, white with white lights and a little cap and ring, just like the things you hang on your tree (if you don’t have small kids, cats, or your cat is “of a certain age.”) Inside the cage are shiny, oversized multi-color shiny balls with spots or stripes on them. It makes a very pretty display at night.
This weekend should see a marked increase in the number of decorated houses. The weather was too unpleasant to do much last week, so those who didn’t decorate before Thanksgiving are going to do it now.
*He cheated. He brought in a roofing crew, and a scissors-lift, and got men and lights up to the third storey roof-peak that way. Seriously cheating.
** Remember when the laser projectors first appeared? This individual thought it was great to project the spots straight up into a dead tree . . . and beyond. Red and green lasers dots. Two days after the display first turned on, the owner got a very unhappy phone call from the FAA about lazing aircraft. The lights were repositioned right quick pronto.
**Luminarias are bonfires. No, despite what the box says, they are bonfires. Farolitos are the candles in paper bags. Electrolitos are the “won’t catch the yard on fire” version. When Santa Fe/Southwest style was so popular in the late 1980s, farolitos appeared all over the place (paper bag, sand, tea-light or very small pillar candle, some assembly required.) Electrolitos replaced them in places with high winds and relatively cheap electricity. What works wonderfully in Santa Fe is not so good in Amarillo or Atlanta. [Protip. If you have lots of dry leaves in your yard, do NOT use real farolitos, OK? Especially if you think you can light them and then leave for the evening. Thank you.])
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
On our street, there’s the blow-up population. Inflatable santas, polar bears, gingerbread men… it’s quite the running display, with a few tree ornaments and the many, amny variations of lights off gutters. Here’s to making light in darkness, and beautiful things!
(And blackout blinds or heavy shutters.)
PIctures please.
If I had a tripod and a digital camera that didn’t helpfully tag locations, I might. That and if I could get permission to post the photos. Some people are touchy about having their houses on the ‘net. (I don’t blame them.)
We are holding solidly to our tradition of Not Until After The Shows, which excludes Christmas Eve Services*, and puts us starting decorating no earlier than Dec. 20th.
*Not that our church is having Christmas Eve Services in 2020.
I don’t care for the cold-white-blue, but the “it’s the American flag, but electric!” blue lights are my favorites.
We had some blue-white LEDs when a string on our tree hit end-of-life. A year later, multi-colored strings came out, and we happily retired the blue-whites.We got a pre-lit pseudo-pine in 2003, and one string eventually went toes up beyond my level of patience and desire to debug it. Replaced it with the blue-white string for a year until multicolored LED strings came out. Much easier on the eyes.
I used to live in Silicon Valley, and a nearby neighborhood had serious decorations. My favorite house was the one where they’d start decorating the day after Thanksgiving, and would add decor every day until Christmas Eve. IIRC, this was the place that rented a towable generator. They also had stiff competition.
Not much out here in the boondocks, though the local everything store just got inflate-a-figures. Meh.
Around here you get the biggest displays in working-class and rising/risen working-class neighborhoods. And some newspapers publish the locations of particularly good displays. There are a couple of blocks in Brooklyn and Queens that get traffic control to handle all the people who come to see.
It gets better when a few neighbors decide to see who can best the biggest display from last year.
If the weather were dry here I’d consider doing some of my sightseeing and getting pictures.
“Farolito” literally is a little pharos, or lighthouse. I love this word. 🙂
“Luminaria” in the American Southwest refers to a vigil bonfire. But in the Spanish of Spain, it means:
1) The candle that burns all day and night in front of a church tabernacle, to show that the Blessed Sacrament is there.
2) Any kind of lantern or lighting apparatus.
3) Any kind of light decorating a public place, balcony, tower, window, street, etc., on a festival day or a secular holiday. “Luminarias pu/blicas” is the public illuminations held in cities on certain secular or religious holidays. There’s also some kind of money that the government gives royal ministers on these public illumination days, that is called “luminarias” as well.
How the heck the US ended up with a super-Spain word instead of an American word, I don’t know.
Then again, Spanish is the language with 15 words for a car muffler.
I’d guess the reason for the odd Spanish usage in the US is because the Spanish of New Mexico has a lot of usages and terms from the 1600s – mid1700s that have changed in Spain. And the northern New Mexico dialect is different again, or at least it used to be different. Population shifts since the 1990s may have changed that.
English doesn’t have a fun word for “candles in bags.” Farolito works well, and was the local term, so it stuck. Or “lumnaria,” because people latched onto the candles in bags and ignored the bonfires. *shrug*
Yeah, “bag candle” doesn’t have a pretty sound.
Re: Dirt Work (I saw no way of commenting directly on that)
In southern MN I, during a Winter storm of decided cold snap (where subzero juts was..) one fellow motioned to the outside.. “It’s that damn black dirt! If it didn’t grow almost anything*, nobody would live in this desolate place!” As for how ‘black’ the ‘black dirt’ is… there is a County, a City (not in that county..) and a river… all named ‘Blue Earth.
* exaggeration