Light the Lights and Terrify the Children

Tonight was the Wakefield Center Neighborhood Association's annual Light the Lights event. On the downtown common in Wakefield, the group strings white lights in the trees every year when winter comes. Frosty comes to greet the kids and there are carollers, hot cocoa, munchkins for the munchkins (kids, not little people visiting from the Land of Oz) and a count down to turn on the lights.

This is an event I have always enjoyed since I was a child myself. The organization has been doing this for over twenty years and I have fond memories of it. I remember my boyfriend from high school dressing as Frosty one year. I remember the year when it snowed a lot and when the lights came on it was like something in a movie.

Tonight was different. It seems that in the ten years I have been a way and missing this event, vendors have made there way to the perimeter of the common selling glowing crap to any child drawn in by anything shiny. Which really is every kid. This year, in an intelligent effort to be more economical the WCNA used it's hard-earned funds to purchase new LED lights for the common. Normally when I shoot holiday lights, I have all the light I need once the lights come on, because really those old badboys are bright enough to land a plane (I also normally have feeling in my fingers because I'm shooting them in the tropics. Not so this year!). This time, the lights were very nice but not so bright. As such, taking pictures was a real challenge.

Still, I have attached some of my favorites. Make that, the ones that amused me.

This is just a decent shot which gives you a bit of an idea of the event. Lights, kids, and Frosty.


This is my favorite of the bunch. It would have been better if there were more lights behind these two, of course, but what makes the pic is the kid freaking out at left.

These two are friends of mine, Owen and Pat. What I wonder about is what the woman is saying the child at left, "You will go visit Frosty and you will like it!"