Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
December 10, 2015 7:20 a.m.
One of the things that struck me most strongly when I started to come down to Florida was the outdoor Christmas light displays. Yes, in Maryland we had outdoor lights but not to the same extent. Lights in Maryland compared to lights in Florida were like roller skates compared to Harleys. Same principle, massive expansion.
My daughter lives in Orlando. A nearby neighborhood has several blocks of lights on every house, in every lawn, and running across the street. They had to get special permission from the Orlando electric company. You could sort of imagine them flipping a switch and the other half of Orlando plunging into darkness. Quite a sight.
The variety of display is astounding. There are icicle drip lights hanging from eaves, blow-up lawn figures, silhouette lighted Santas and reindeer. Some displays are fairly restrained and others cover entire lawns. Some are droll. I saw one in Orlando that had one of those plastic frame deer with lights and motion. The deer’s head would go up and down. Some enterprising soul put a beer can in the deer’s mouth so it appeared to be chugging Coors. Some displays are more difficult to relate to Christmas such as the lighted outline of a helicopter on the lawn at one of my daughter’s neighbors.
Holiday lights seem to be a long-standing tradition, at least in the northern hemisphere. The tradition of the Yule Log, holiday bonfires, and the placement of lighted candles in trees were common during at the darkest part of the year in early times. Students of myth say that these were devices early people created to assure the return of the sun. Their placement occurred close to the time of the winter solstice around December 21.
Perhaps that is why I find something lovely about driving around to look at lights and outdoor displays. Our downtown area does a nice job of lighting the season, with the large tree down by the waterfront. There are a few displays on 14th St. both south and north of Atlantic. My favorite island display is on Northridge on Citrona and just south of Lime Street. There are plenty of ooohs and aaahs on a trip through that neighborhood. Sometimes I make a second circuit as it’s tough to take it all in with one pass.
We don’t have to put up lights to assure the sun’s return but it is a way for northerners to recall the feeling of Christmas when it’s 80 degrees outside. So one evening, why not bundle everyone into the car and go look at the light displays?
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.