Christmas lights evoke nostalgic memories

Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

I wasn't sure, but the streets in my neighborhood seemed darker this Christmas. Fewer dangling icicles. No multi-colored blinking bushes. Just one lawn display.

There were good reasons this year, I figured. Nothing had been normal for three months. The nation was at war. People were out of work.

Still, it bothered me for days. I kept waiting for a change. I turned on my lights each evening — they had been up since right after Thanksgiving — but it felt like someone had pulled the plug on joy.

So, the other night, I took my daughters on a drive to see what we could find.

We do this every year about this time, and the girls were visibly excited, unfazed by their father's gloomy predictions.

"Light alert!" they'd shout whenever they saw a house with lights on, even houses with just a single strand.

Drives like this are among the strongest memories I have of my own childhood. I can still see my father at the wheel of our old Rambler as he took my brother and sister and myself through the streets of Kailua, searching for lights.

We would urge him to keep looking. Just around the corner, Dad, one more street, please, please, please. C'mon, it's Christmas.

Like most kids, the lights stopped shining for me when I became a teenager. They were still hanging from homes, of course, but I didn't see them.

Soon after I got married, my wife talked me into buying a string of lights. I hadn't realized how much I had missed them until I flipped the switch for the first time.

I've hung lights now for 14 years, but it was my daughters who helped me remember how to see them.

"Light alert," shouted the girls as we continued our quest. "Light alert! Light alert! Light alert!"

There were lights out there. All you had to do was look.

I am sure we were an odd sight, the three of us staring out the car windows and singing our own lyrics to "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."

On some streets, we were driving so slowly that cars backed up behind us.

It didn't matter if the display was flashy or simple. The girls loved them all.

After 30 minutes of this, we went home. The two of them dashed into the house to tell their mother what they had seen.

But I waited in the car for a few moments. I wasn't ready for it to end.

Please, please, please, I thought, just one more street. C'mon, it's Christmas.