Christmas lights

We went to two places to see displays of Christmas lights this week. One was in our own town green where a Christmas display is set up every year. I'm proud of our town for including a Nativity Scene. Unfortunately, my picture of that didn't turn out very well. But here are some pictures of other scenes from our town's display. The first shows Santa and his sleigh being pulled by the eight original reindeer but led by Rudolph. Sorry, Rudy. I cut most of your head out of the picture but your nose still shows a bit.

The next two pictures show our children looking into smaller displays. Evan is looking at Santa making his list and checking it twice. We couldn't see either of our kids' names on the lists there so those must be the naughty lists. To see the details, you might want to click on the picture to see it larger.

The next picture, on the right, shows Emma looking at a little workshop display. The toys are helping to make other toys. That's good engineering practice - make one item (the bear in this case) that helps you make the next item (the truck) more easily. Who knew Santa had his workshop organized on sound engineering principles?

The next day, we traveled about 60 miles to Attleboro, MA to the LaSalette Shrine where there is a Christmas Festival of Lights. There are over 300,000 lights with many other displays to enjoy. We started by going to a concert by the resident singer-composer and LaSalette missionary Father Pat who has two concerts a day five days a week. I don't know how he does it. His songs always feature the real story of Christmas. There are also displays of nativity scenes from around the world, and one huge Nativity Scene shown here on the left.

The last picture, on the right, is my poor attempt at taking a picture of a portion of the outdoor lights around a pond. The weather was cold and the pond was frozen but the ice was flat and clear and you can see the lights reflecting off it. We were fortunate to be there on a night when it wasn't crowded. Other years, we've been packed in with huge crowds and it's hard to move. This year was a joy. We had a small meal in the cafeteria and Cindy had some hot chocolate. I always come home happy after visiting the LaSalette Christmas display. If you get a chance, I urge you to go.