Christmas Lights

We drove around and looked at Christmas lights last night.  Just the ones locally, not going out to the lake to see "The Festival of Angels" display that we've seen many times before.  We have a beautiful display closer to home in nearby Cann Gardens.  Lighting the dark, early winter evening and starkly contrasting against the black sky were vignettes of poinsettias, nursery rhyme characters, angels with clouds floating above them, and adobe-style structures. Not to mention the beautiful manger scene and a lovely, lighted church in its electronic beauty.

Our drive took us into neighborhoods with homes cheerily lit up with outlined architectural details, one looking like a gingerbread house with scalloped roof line and windows.  This was so fun!  We ended our tour in the parking lot of a church that had synchronized music and lights dancing up and down Christmas-tree shapes in neon waves of color. Then the colors on the church would change from psychedelic purples, greens, orange or red, illuminating it like a Spanish mission.

This seemed like a culmination of a wonderful Sunday that had begun very early with my making a casserole to cook in the oven on low until we could enjoy it when our son joined us for lunch.  We had been delighted at church to see the children's Christmas presentation, a tableau of tiny shepherds, wise men, and a blue-clad cherub placing a swaddled doll in a manger. The distractible shepherds found the hooked shepherd's rods useful for waving, interlocking and aiming at others, providing stifled laughter and open-mouthed concern in the audience.

I knew my own grandchildren in Houston were to be in their presentation today.  I recalled  9-year-old Anne-Marie's words to me at Thanksgiving:  "Mimi, I have three parts in our play," she announced. "I'm Elizabeth, Mary, and an angel!" When I registered astonishment, she explained, "Well,  I'm really supposed to be only Elizabeth.  She only has one line, 'His name is John!'"

Then my precise, articulate granddaughter went on, "See, Isaac (her two-year-old brother) is Baby Jesus, and I'm the only one that can control him, so I'm Mary for that one scene. And I have to substitute for an angel for just one scene while she does something else." Anyway, I would love to have seen the play, and I scanned the internet for pictures.  All that had been posted last night was one of group singing in which I spotted Maddie, 6, identifiable in the crowd by her bobbing red pony-tail.

I had learned on Facebook earlier in the day the sad news of the passing of a great-niece. She had been cured of brain cancer as a child of 5, but it had returned with a vengeance over 20 years later.   After weeks of aggressive treatment she lost her battle; but as her mother shared, "She got her wings today." Brooke was a light to all who knew her.

The first Christmas light was the star  that led the wise men to Jesus.  It was His light that guided her home.