The whirl of seasonal events is well upon me and mine …
It has been quite lovely the last little while, connecting with friends and seeing what scheduling wizardry we can manage to see one another around all the commitments that seem to overtake calendars this time of year.
Had a lovely time this past Saturday at Print Affair: Silver and Gold, SNAP’s annual winter fundraising event.
Some truly beautiful work available, and it was a great night of running into people and catching up. I even donated some block prints and a copy of NEST {types} to the fundraising efforts, and the work seemed to go over well. It feels good to be able to contribute to this organization in some small way – they do great stuff!
But that’s not all that’s been glittery/shiny/sparkly in my corner of the world lately … do you have one of THESE in your neighbourhood??? :
This is a special sort of madness that grips certain people this time of year. The people who do this display (really lovely people too, BTW) have mastered the fine art of going completely over the top! This light show has grown over the years – roughly doubled in scale and wattage every year for the last 4 or so (they are almost all LED lights thankfully). I don’t really know what to say … It’s amazingly gaudy. It’s hardly environmentally friendly. It brings all kinds of traffic into the neighbourhood every night, that crawls past completely oblivious of pedestrians and other vehicles.
And yet …
For all the negatives, there is something ridiculously, hilariously great about it – not the least of which is the utter delight that these folks take in doing it. It takes them literally months to make the armatures and mount all the lights, and weeks climbing up and down scaffolding, ladders, and (this year – another first!) a bucket truck.
Call me just as crazy – but I find their childlike joy in making this happen quite lovely (and a little refreshing) … yes, I know that in many ways, displays like this exemplify the commercial crassness that has overtaken the season (I won’t even get started on all that’s wrong with using conspicuous over-consumption to drive the economy …).
But for all of that, there’s still something about those lights on a very cold, dark winter night that reminds me of what it was like the first time I ever helped string lights when I was a little girl. And that moment of magic when they were plugged in, and the snow sparkled with every colour of the rainbow.
It is a time of year when we celebrate the return of the light, after all …
OTT is rather apropos for the season. As long as it’s not right outside your window I suppose:)
Sometimes it’s nice to try and remember, how as a child, these types of things were delightful. Enjoy the season, Sydney.
(It’s the furiously blinking ones that drive me nuts!)
Yes, I think it is too Karen. It’s too easy to get really cynical about all of it. I’m with you othe blinking ones though!! Ditto the versions that are synched to really really cheesy music … Too much input onto many fronts!