Oh Those Tacky Christmas Lights!

Christmas lights take me back to the innocence of my childhood, to a time when my parents would gather me and my five siblings and put us in the station wagon with winter coats over our pajamas and we would ride around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights displayed on other people's houses.

Did you do that too?


One of the houses on the Richmond Tacky Lights Christmas tour
Photo courtesy of Richmond.com

Those were the days when Christmas lights were larger than they are today -- no LEDs back then -- and they only came in blue, green, red, yellow and cream.  Pink and turquoise were nowhere to be found and I don't remember anyone ever having only white lights on their Christmas tree or on their house as is popular today.

 

It's a warm and cozy memory for me, made more dramatic because we would view the lights in the darkness of night and everything seemed magical from the safety of a car with your parents in the front seat.  Those were also the days when there were no seat belts so the babies would be lying in a carry-all and we would giggle and wiggle and slide around on the seats and press our faces to the cold glass of the car window and pick our favorite lights.

 

Today, my 23-year-old son absolutely adores Christmas lights!  There can never be enough Christmas lights for him and he especially loves a section of houses in Maryland that we pass on the way to his grandparents house where the neighbors are in competition with each other to see who can put up the most lights on the houses and in their yards.  I can't imagine what their electrical bill looks like.


Another house on the Richmond Tacky Lights Christmas tour
Photo Courtesy of Richmond.com

 

My son now lives in Richmond, VA and yesterday he tweeted about the Tacky Lights Christmas tour in Richmond, VA which of course is right up his alley.  I'm sure he will check out a few of the over-the-top displays which are part of a tradition started in Richmond in 1985 when local DJ Mad Dog Gottlieb booked a Winn bus and took a select group of Richmonders on a "tacky lights" tour of 10 to 12 houses.

Who knew that Richmond took such pride in its' creative abundance of Christmas lights?

Initially, houses needed a minimum of 10,000 lights.  Then it was decided that houses needed up to 20,000 and 30,000  Now, houses must have a minimum of 40,000 lights to be considered as part of the tour.  Can you imagine how long it takes for people to string this stuff up?

But what is tacky to one person is exciting and beautiful to another.

I can't help but think that there are lots of families out there this year creating their own memories by gathering their young children into their cars at night, riding around to ooh and ahh at the blinking, twinkling, multi-colored unbelievable houses full of Christmas Cheer!

Another house on the Richmond Tacky Lights Christmas tour
Photo Courtesy of Richmond.com

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney, a celebrated and grand Irish poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, sadly died yesterday in a hospital in Dublin at the age of 74. 

Irish Poet And Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney

To say that Heaney had a way with words is an understatement.  His powerful verse transported readers around the world to Ireland and sometimes to its rural landscape and the grind of its daily responsibilities.  To me, his phrasing always felt magical and lyrical no matter what subject he addressed. 

As a tribute to Heaney's great talents, here is Digging, one of my favorite poems that Heaney wrote in 1966.  Every time I read it, I feel as though I am right there with him in the bogs, smelling the wet dirt and watching as turf is cut for fuel.



Cutting Turf In Ireland

Digging

By Seamus Heaney 1939–2013

 

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

 

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

 

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

 

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

 

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

 

 

Seamus Heaney, "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist. Copyright 1966 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC.

Source: Death of a Naturalist (1966)

Aer Lingus -- Take Us Away

Ireland's Scenic Coastline

You know when you discover something for yourself and you can't wait to share it with your friends?

Well, that's the way I feel about Ireland.

I haven't been back to Ireland for years but I will never forget the trip that I made with my husband.  Fantastic and magical from beginning to end.  I was very sad to leave.

And now one of my sisters and her husband are flying to Ireland today and I'm so envious!

 

I am also excited for them for I know that once they land in Dublin tomorrow they will forget about the daily grind of life here and fall into the more relaxed and civilized way of life in Ireland, marked by the most delicious brown bread in the whole wide world and the freshest salmon.  The Guinness and the Smithwick's tastes better in Ireland too!

I wish them a safe and romantic trip in the land of the green as they discover the incredible mix of history, beauty, creativity and Ireland's best resource: its people!  I don't think my sister and her husband will travel through Ireland as quickly as this video shows but I'm sure the scenic beauty will stay with you and them for a long time.  Watch and see: