The Year the Christmas Lights Went Out

After a sumptuous Christmas Eve feast at Trivetti's Restaurant and Piano Bar with my sister, I proposed that we drive around the community and look at the holiday lights and decorations (a traditional Christmas Eve pastime). Never have I seen so much darkness surrounding so many homes at this time of year. I was prepared to ooh and aah over even the most trite and overdone lighting schemes, but I was completely unprepared for the darkness. Not one in 15 homes was decorated. Nay, not even one in 50! And our Lubbock sister reported similar conditions there, too. Surely, we thought, it wasn't because of the pennies one could save on electricity--one could always decorate without electricity for daytime enjoyment. I can't figure it out. Does anyone have any ideas why there was so little outward display of celebration this year? Or maybe southern Arizona and the Texas Panhandle were unique. Was your community ablaze with yuletide cheer, or, like ours, was your community extra somber in its "celebration" of Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa in 2008?

[Comment from author, September, 2021:

In looking back over this entry, I can now see how this condition may have come about. The year 2008 was a disastrous year for the stock market and real estate, among other things. My own retirement account lost about 40% of its value! Little wonder, then, that the nation may not have felt like decorating for Christmas. As a democrat and enthusiastic Obama supporter, however, I found it to be a very good year politically.]