Love the lights of Christmas

I like the lights of the Christmas season and especially enjoy the variety of styles that people use to decorate their yards.
I hope we have enough snow to cover the leaves and brown grass, but not too much to bury the lights in the yard.
Before the new LED lights, the lights outside created enough heat to melt the snow away so that they shone through the drifts. Nowadays, the cool LED lights that use energy sparingly can disappear beneath the snow and not be seen until spring.
As the days grow shorter and darkness falls earlier in the afternoon, there is something soothing about the lights that brighten every home on the walk home from work.
The lights sparkle and light the pathways to homes, but also the pathway along the sidewalk. Manufacturers make lighting one’s home or yard easier and more decorative every year.
One feels extremely secure and safe walking in the December darkness lit by lights in yards, and I am left feeling upbeat by their cheeriness.
As anyone can tell when they drive by my home, I really like miniature white lights. When blues, oranges, reds, greens, and yellows are spread out, together those colours create a whole new wonderment.
White lights can come in various hues. Some lights can now change colours automatically and cycle through the rainbow of colours. Where whole strings of lights at one time blinked on and off, today’s lights can flicker through various rhythms and modes.
At one time, outdoor figurines were cut from plywood and painted as two-dimensional characters. Reindeer and sleighs glided across roofs lit by spotlights. Today, blow-up snowmen, Santas, and nursery rhyme characters are lit with interior lights and shine across yards.
Grazing wire deer figurines, with lighting, grace front lawns. The neighborhoods appear alive with merriment. Lit Christmas trees, meanwhile, appear in front of windows.
The spirit of happiness seems to abound.
I often have wondered what it was like without the electric lights of Christmas. Original trees often had lit candles of the branches that caused more than one house to burn.
Boughs of green wrapped around porch posts. Wreaths appeared in front of doorways. But the green finery of Christmas only was observed in daytime while now the glow of lights sparkle in the darkness of the evening.
Each decade, our decorations become more complex. Yet the excitement of the lights of Christmas brightens every day.