Let There Be Light

This week I read the following article by William Wan in the Washington Post. It's the story of two neighbors who carried on a friendly Christmas lights competition for over a decade. There's nothing here about the true meaning of Christmas, but I found it a touching story of friendship and camaraderie through hardship. And it made me laugh. Here's the introduction...

For more than a year, the lights sat in Richard Diller's garage, tens of thousands of bulbs and strands gone dark on his dusty shelves. And all that time, his neighbor Steve Andrews had followed suit, keeping his own lights stowed away.

But no one on Severn Avenue could forget about the war of lights that raged for years on their block -- epic battles between Richard and Steve every December that bathed the street in bright, almost psychedelic bursts of color.

People in the small corner of Severna Park in Anne Arundel County would watch from their porches as the two men, equally burly and bullheaded, strove to outdo each other. As they worked atop their ladders, a flurry of insults and taunts would fly across the few feet of grass separating their homes. Down below, their long-suffering wives would simply shake their heads.

Then last year, it all came to a sudden end. On Thanksgiving, when the lights battle usually began, Richard's wife, Eileen, passed away in her sleep.

Suddenly, Christmas lights were the last thing on anyone's mind. In the weeks that followed, all the caustic banter, the gaudy props and bright strings, even Christmas itself, seemed wrong somehow -- too cheery, too trivial.

For the first time in 12 years, the two houses passed Christmas in darkness.