The Fading Lights

There are a number of elements that establish the changing theme of summer through the fall and into winter. The declining temperature, the leaves changing into a multicolored rainbow, rain into snow, and in more recent years Christmas lights, which are being seen now many months before their intended date.

A trend has been developing over the last several years by retailers to increase upon the length of which these can be viewed. In doing so, they are diminishing from the very quality of what makes those lights so special.

Consider for a moment now how strange is a child’s first encounter with Santa Clause during the season. He is found within a garden of green wreaths and a chain of multicolored lights. He smiles cheerfully and offers up a well-established laugh. This is responded with a plastic pumpkin and an innocent smile to question only, ‘Trick or treat?’

While this might seem odd or perhaps slightly even horrific, it is happening. At some point in the recent past it became accepted that Christmas was not a holiday that encompassed only a single day but should be regarded as a complete season. The time length of that season is not defined and is growing longer every year.

The philosophy behind this unfortunate revelation can be further emphasized by the following thought: ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ The modernized question might be: If the mall opens at midnight on the day after Thanksgiving and nobody arrives to shop are their holiday lights still shining?

Too much of a good thing will, over time, lower the quality of the object being enjoyed. When being first viewed now as early as September, it falls to wonder at just how much beauty will be left in those lights when the night finally comes on which they were really meant to shine.