Three days to the light

I grew up with colored, flashing, Christmas lights.

I am old enough that I remember the larger bulbs, the ones that got hot and we couldn't leave the tree on more than an hour or two at a time. Real Christmas tree + very hot lights = unacceptable fire risk. When I was a young teen we switched to the current form factor mini-lights. Still colored light! Still flashing, but not the modern speed flashing, more of a gentle on .... off .... on .... off. Around that time we also added lights around the inside of the front windows.

For a few years, there, my family had some divorce-related making-do around the holidays. I went to college and moved out, and for eight years my partner and I adhered to the Jewish holidays. I still went home for Christmas, and the light were colored and slowly flashing.

That's the tree my mother still has, and I love it.

When my current partner and I set up our Christmas traditions, well, my partner has very strong feelings about white, non-flashing, lights. And I had to think about it -- did I care? Was I committed to the multi-colored light strands of my family of origin?

I was not.

We established our holiday traditions and carry them forth to this day. The tree is decorated in ornaments that are meaningful to each of us, with white strands of (now LED) mini-lights, in the warm white thank you very much, and they do not flash at all.

We turn the tree on first thing in the morning, before the tea kettle. And we open the front curtains, even though it is still dark at 7:00 a.m. The lights stay on until the last person awake goes to bed.

Sixteen hours a day, more or less, the light of the tree shines bright.

SCA? Knitting circle? Genealogy? Gardening? Roman history? Ships in bottles? WWII? Model trains?

At some point in one's middle age, one looks up to realize that the List Of Appropriate Middle-Age Interests and Hobbies has come to loom before one, like the cover art of a Tingler (by Chuck Tingle) and that one has no choice but to make a selection.