It’s all more than a wee bit fuzzy, obviously I’ll have to take a look at the instructions on how to take night time photographs of lights. These ones are in Dunfermline town centre, a town in Fife about 15 miles away from where I live. At one point it was the capital of Scotland. It has the ruins of a palace and lots of old buildings including an abbey. It was the birthplace of the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
It is a very historic town although you wouldn’t really think so from these photos. I took them because the lights are actually a lot better than the ones in Kirkcaldy, which are that bright cold white colour and consist of a design at the top of poles, not strung from side to side of the street like these ones.
I don’t think these lights are that great but at least they have some colour about them, although I’m not keen on blue as a Christmas colour. Whatever happened to the traditional green and red?
I was wondering why I so dislike the blue, then I realised that it’s because I assosciate blue with the emergency services. Honestly, the cops aren’t after me but I’d rather they didn’t appear in the Christmas decorations.
I have warm white lights at home as well as old coloured ones and as I get older I’m appreciating the colours more, going back to the way Christmas was when I was wee I suppose.
I remember that we went up to London to see the Regent/Oxford Street lights when we lived in the south of England for a couple of years in the late 1970s. I was deeply unimpressed by it all. Regent Street was just white and another street had laser lights for the first time ever. We braved the IRA bombs, they always had a Christmas campaign in those days, and I remember saying that we could have been blown up because we fell for the hype of laser lights, which amounted to two lines of light, one red and one green I think, which travelled the length of the street and weren’t very visible.
If you want to see how Edinburgh kicked off the festive season have a look at the short but spectacular firework display here.
I love my colored lights on the tree. I have seen some beauties with just the white lights, but for me, I prefer the colors. But I’m a colorful person by nature anyway, so there you go.
I still love driving around looking at the Christmas lights. It was a huge treat every year all through my childhood.
Dad was a sucker for outdoor decoration, so our house was always tastefully but beautifully done. I remember him cutting stove pipe into 3 lengths, painting it red, and mounting it on a wood beam. A little ‘drizzle of aluminum foil to look like melting wax, and the big candle flame light bulbs and voila! A giant candle display for the front. He also cut a huge star out of plywood and mounted lights all round for the roof peak. Very creative for an engineer/statistician, yes?
We didn’t have much money, but we sure seemed to have a wonderful time of it anyway. I don’t even want to imagine what my folks sacrificed to provide the bounty that always awaited us under the tree.
(Sorry to wax nostalgic. It’s been a very melancholy weekend here.)
Pearl,
I enjoyed your lyrical waxing. Your Dad sounds great, the candle idea is wonderful, so much better than all the plastic stuff that you see nowadays. When I was wee my dad had to work on Christmas day as it wasn’t a holiday in Scotland at that time. We always just had the New Year holidays instead. It was a busy time for dad as he had a fruiterer and florist shop in Glasgow and was hard at it making up displays for customers. I have a brother who was an engineer/draughtsman/shipyard manager and he can turn his hand to anything too.
Now I see that loads of people have gone out to buy more guns, I don’t see how they can ever stop shootings like Newtown when people can get a hold of guns so easily. It’s especially sad when the kids are so wee.
I love the lights strung across the street! My town doesn’t do any holiday decorations in the town center – it is a shame.
I have colored lights on my tree. The all white look is pretty, but not my style!
Anbolyn,
I have coloured lights on my tree in the living room and white twinkling lights in a big vase in the sitting room. We usually put a real tree in that room but I decided against it this year, I’m missing the pine tree smell though! I thought that just about everywhere did Christmas lights. I’m beginnning to think that we go a bit crazier about Christmas than you do in the US!
A lot of cities/towns cut back because of economic conditions – as have a lot of homes. But there are still a whole lot of them out here that would make Clark Griswold jealous!
Pearl,
It’s the same here, electricity is costing so much now that people seem to be cutting back on the lights. I actually had to google Clark Griswold! I’ve never seen a Lampoon film – but I can imagine what you mean!