Lit

I lied.

I smugly commented on Heather’s Christmas light post that I too share in her dislike of premature outdoor holiday light displays. December 1st is when it is safe to plug in robotic grazing deer and four-feet-tall light up candy canes.

Yesterday, November 25th, hubby put Christmas lights on our house. And we plugged them in. To a timer. At 4:30 pm they snapped on. We were officially those people. On our rather long suburban street, we are House #2 to have lights up. Not bad for the newcomers.

Next weekend is promising to be too busy for hubby to spend hours and hours outside mumbling choice words and falling off ladders. It became apparent if we wanted to make our house look remotely Griswoldian, the time had come. The weather was nice—hubby didn’t have to wear a hat, boots, gloves, a scarf, a parka, or a ski mask to drape icicle lights bewitchingly from the storm gutters. The kids were occupied, which meant they wouldn’t be attempting to sneak up ladders or zap themselves.

We bought the icicle lights last year, at Target’s Christmas clearance. They were intended for our future home. At the time, we didn’t know how, when, or where, but we were going to do everything we could to move in 2005. The lights were a motivation, a symbol, a display of the belief we spent our last Christmas in Golden.

Yesterday, electricity was breathed through the green twists and turns of outdoor wiring and the little white bulbs shone brightly. I didn’t realize how important that moment would be, to see the lights we placed in a red grocery basket nearly a year ago come to life, rimming our eaves and our porch. Suddenly, it didn’t matter to me if the calendar said November. It felt like Christmas, our house wrapped in a twinkling bow of white.