🎄 Spread Some Christmas Cheer

[VintageFemme]

We've always had Sprite Cranberry drinks at Christmastime although we use ginger ale instead of Sprite but still...

[LOQUI]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLGBEETtEPc

[Orema]

[GeorgiaMa'am]

My Lego Christmas tree with presents

[PlatinumPearl]

Santa Claus Village Arctic Circle Live Video Webcam (Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland)





In this live video, offered by Rovaniemi, the Official hometown of Santa Claus,
you can view the main square of Santa Claus Village, crossed by the Arctic Circle.

For more videos about Santa & Santa’s Village,
visit www.Santatelevision.com & www.youtube.com/santatelevision

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[FireSignFemme]

[Stone-Butch]

Don't talk about Rudolph as SHE is the best . Her and all the other female reindeer do a fine job every year. Yes its true, all deer with antlers at the end of Dec. ARE female. Males loose their antlers at the end of Nov or beginning of Dec. The females grow them so they can defend their babies come spring. Makes me happy you can depend on the females every Xmas.

[PlatinumPearl]

[Bèsame*]

I revisited this stuff. I had turned my nose up at it when my Mom bought it. Well, I tried it again. Actually was pretty good. Hers didn't have a massive amount of citrus in it. Give it a whirl!

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[VintageFemme]

one of my favorite holiday shows

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[Orema]

A man strung Christmas lights from his home to his neighbor’s to support her. The whole community followed.


Last year, residents in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood in Baltimore County strung Christmas lights from one side of the street to the other to show a struggling neighbor that she was not alone. (Leabe Commisso)

By Sydney Page
Dec. 21, 2021, 6:00 a.m. EST

It started last November with a single string of Christmas lights on a Baltimore County street.

Kim Morton was home watching a movie with her daughter when she received a text from her neighbor who lives directly across the road. He told her to peek outside.

Matt Riggs had hung a string of white Christmas lights, stretching from his home to hers in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood, just north of the Baltimore city line. He also left a tin of homemade cookies on her doorstep.

The lights, he told her, were meant to reinforce that they were always connected despite their pandemic isolation.

“I was reaching out to Kim to literally brighten her world,” said Riggs, 48.


The strand of white lights that Matt Riggs strung from his home to Kim Morton’s house when he found out she was having a difficult time. (Matt Riggs)

He knew his neighbor was facing a dark time. Morton had shared that she was dealing with depression and anxiety. She was also grieving the loss of a loved one and struggling with work-related stress. The mounting pressure led to panic attacks.

Riggs could relate.

Guiding his two teenagers through remote school was draining, financial angst was consuming and “by the end of the year I was just beside myself, 2020 was difficult for a lot of us,” he said.

A bit of brightness was in order, he decided, but he certainly did not expect that his one strand of Christmas lights would somehow spark a neighborhood-wide movement.

In the days that followed Riggs’s light-hanging gesture, neighbor after neighbor followed suit, stretching lines of Christmas lights from one side of the street to the other.

When Leabe Commisso, who lives on the other end of the block, saw what Riggs had done, she wanted in.

“I said to my neighbor: ‘Let’s do it, too,’ ” she recalled. “Before we knew it, we were cleaning out Home Depot of all the lights.”

Quickly, other neighbors caught on.

“Little by little, the whole neighborhood started doing it,” said Morton, 49, who has lived in Rodgers Forge for 17 years. “The lights were a physical sign of connection and love.”

She and Riggs were stunned to see neighbors with drills and ladders, up on their rooftops and tangled in trees — doing whatever they had to do to hang the lights horizontally. They were mostly masked and at a distance, but for the first time in a long time, a feeling of togetherness — and light — had returned.


The Morton family. Will and Kim Morton, with their two children, Elliott, 18, and Kate, 15. (Carly Fuller Photography)

“What blows my mind is that it was all organic,” Riggs said. “It just happened. There was no planning. It just grew out of everybody’s desire for beauty and joy and connection.”

Seeing his neighbors adopt his idea, “genuinely brought tears to my eyes,” Riggs continued. “From such a humble beginning, a tiny little act, it became this event.”

Even though he was initially seeking to support Morton, “it turns out, we all needed this,” he said.


While some blocks used white lights, others opted for colorful bulbs. (Megan Wilberton)


Melissa DiMuzio, who lives on the same block with her wife and two children, was due for a pick-me-up.

“It was a tough time. We were all struggling in our own way,” she said. When she saw what Riggs had done, “I really wanted to participate.”

DiMuzio took her contribution a step further. She decided that, on her string of lights, she would include a fitting message: “Love lives here.”

“I’m a go-big-or-go-home kind of person,” she said. “I stayed up all night bending dry cleaning coat hangers. It was crazy, but it worked.”



Matt Riggs and Melissa DiMuzio, setting up the lights this year. (Matt Riggs)

Before the pandemic, DiMuzio and her wife were contemplating moving to a new area, hoping for a house with more space and a bigger yard. But once they saw how the neighborhood came together to support one of their own, the couple decided to stay.

“You’re not going to find this community just anywhere,” DiMuzio said, estimating that of the hundreds of red-brick rowhouses that make up the neighborhood, at least 75 percent of residents participated in the entirely unplanned light display.

Although it started on Dunkirk Road, other streets in the area were soon lined with lights, too, and each block had its own character. While some showcased classic white lights, others opted for colorful or twinkly bulbs.
Megan Wilberton, a middle school teacher who lives on Murdock Road with her husband and two children, quickly got on board.


Neighbors laying out cable wire and coordinating the light display for the second year. (Matt Riggs)

“It was unbelievable,” said Wilberton, who recently shared the story in a Facebook post. “It just blossomed into this amazing community effort.”

“It’s the best neighborhood,” she added. “Everybody is friendly and helpful and loving and kind.”

For Riggs, the sea of light symbolizes exactly that.

“It really does represent a connection that we are feeling,” he said. “This is a very special neighborhood, and this is a physical manifestation of that.”

The collective display resonated so deeply that the neighborhood agreed to do it again this year — and every year to come, pandemic or otherwise.

On Nov. 21, Rodgers Forge residents hung their lights together.


This year was a more coordinated effort, and the Rodgers Forge community decided to have a light-hanging party in late November. (Matt Riggs)

“We made a party of it,” Riggs said.

To emphasize their commitment to the project, and ease the process going forward, neighbors drilled anchors into the brick of their homes and attached the light strands to metal cable wires to make them more secure. They also added more signs to go along with the original “love lives here” motto, including one that says “dream” and another that says “believe.”

“It’s been a bright spot — truly,” Riggs said.

But the impromptu effort has perhaps had the most profound impact on the person for whom it was originally intended.

“It made me look up, literally and figuratively, above all the things that were dragging me down,” Morton said. “It was light, pushing back the darkness.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...istmas-lights/

[Bèsame*]

Apparently this is a thing here. Had dinner in Dunedin and saw many homes decorated with repurposed chandeliers for Xmas. I'll be looking to make one this year as well🎄