Welcome to day 8 of this year’s walk down Christmas Memory Lane!

If it feels like were zig-zagging back ‘n’ forth a lot between Saint John and McKee’s in the last couple of posts… that’d be understandable. Today’s post will not be a departure from that trend.

We’re back in Saint John…

Is this first Christmas Memory post you’re seeing?
You can get caught up by starting back on day 1 to understand this year’s theme.

Christmas Lights

I loved stringing Christmas lights outside in the yard.

From the time I was a kid, back in the 70s, part of the Christmas season always involved driving around to look at the lights. When I was very young, that was an activity in an of itself… you went out with no other goal than to take in the magic of all these illuminated yards. As we got older, it may have less frequently been a question of outings just for that purpose, but it was still often a part of other trips out. Perhaps we took a different route to our destination or returned home via “the long way” so that we could admire lights along the way.

These particular photos were taken in our yard just after a fairly recent snowfall and an even more recent spell of freezing rain. If you look carefully at the branches of the dogwood shrubs, you’ll see a thick layer of ice coating the branches. This made things particularly magical, as the sparkle & shine of the lights was reflected & refracted even more as a result.

I miss the ability to string lights. We don’t do it here for a number of reasons:

• Firstly… Here, you pretty much only see the small LED lights and while they serve a purpose, I do love these big old fashioned lights.
• Secondly… Investing in a bunch of strings of lights, from scratch, represents a sum … whereas back home, you build up strings over years.
• Finally (& most practically)… there are no outdoor plugs on our house (indeed it’s not uncommon here), so we’d have to leave the garage door permanently cracked open to allow for the cord to be plugged in…. (and that’s like an open invitation for field mice! We’ve dealt with scratching in the walls before…. no thanks!)

So for now, I shall continue to content myself with lots of extra LED / fairy lights indoors.

Light in Darkness

One thing I like about the Jewish feast day of Hanukkah is that it’s a celebration of Light in Darkness… ultimately what Christians are supposed to be as well. Our world is increasingly ‘dark’ with just a lot of junk going on, whether near or far.

Speaking about Jesus, John said this in the first five verses of his Gospel…

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.“
John 1.1-5

The more we are like Jesus…
…the more light will shine and darkness will not overcome.

Sounds good to me, shall we work on that together?

Thank you sharing this memory and…