It might just be me, or maybe it’s true, that the Christmas lights and decorations are going up earlier and earlier each year. At the beginning of October, I started noticing them along the highway. When I was younger and more reactive, I would probably have felt like complaining. Let’s have the in between holidays first! Stop jumping the gun! I don’t feel that way any longer.

Lights during winter have a long tradition among many cultures, and can be traced back to the European lighting of the Yule Log, which celebrated the winter solstice, the return of the light. Electric light displays though particularly belong to the celebration of the birth of Jesus, as they had their inception in America, where Benjamin Franklin’s lightbulb invention opened the door for ever increasing, and even competitive, displays of Christmas cheer using light.

The coming of the light is a powerful idea, one that pervades every aspect of our existence. It is hope. It is faith and a love for what is beautiful. Maybe people don’t think of it that way when they put out colorful lights for the season, or even the plain white ones (which are my favorites), but the tradition behind the gesture is as powerful now as it was in 16th century Germany, where the custom of lighting trees to celebrate the coming of God to earth was first recorded.

There is something about a collective celebration that binds people together, not only with each other in the present, but with the hundreds and even thousands of years gone by–with our ancestors themselves who practiced the same celebrations. It’s a continuum, a passing down of sacred ideas and beliefs, but maybe more importantly in the Christmas tradition at least, it a passing down of joy. There is a sense of wonder at our world and ourselves reflected in Christmas lights. A sense that binds us to a common vision. Maybe that is why there are so many misanthropes who want to do away with these things. They will have their work cut out for them.

So I drive by the lights at night. It’s still October, not even Halloween yet, and there they are, the ubiquitous Christmas decorations that seem to take over every holiday between now and January. I like this. It is like a symphony to me, the beginning of the lights, the decorations that precede the grand day, when it is remembered that God and man were made one. The lights are the first notes in the symphony, gentle, still far away, before the great celebration of the coming of the Light comes back around. The sense of wonder is born in the sparkling lights. The children see it more clearly than we do, but we still feel it. The lights make me feel like a child again. They impart a sense that something great is going to happen. After a long darkness, Joy is coming to the human race. If it pervades Halloween and Thanksgiving, that is a good thing. They are the opening measures, but the true celebration is only beginning. I think even if Christmas lights started showing up in the summer, it is not wrong that it should.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns and articles appear periodically on BrownwoodNews.com