The flames wound across, up, and down serpentine curves and steep hills in two shimmering parallel lines tracing both curbs of the main road. Weighed down by sand, from a distance flimsy paper lunch bags and plastic milk cartons with carefully shorn spouts were radiant beacons in the otherwise blue-gray darkness of a long winter night. The opaque glow created by thousands of candles survived within small sturdy glasses and tiny metal pails. These objects served a crucial double purpose—they prevented any plastic or paper from burning and shielded candle flames from unforgiving winter winds.
This flickering display stood as a sure sign that everyone in the neighborhood was ready for Christmas. There were no garish smiling Santa icons or sober reminders of Christ’s birth. Hebrew words and Stars Of David weren’t found. This strange controlled fire had the primordial aura of pre-Christian winter solstice holidays. It was a communal expression of ancient mysticism bringing a surge of warmth and light to a muted exurban façade.
These traditional outdoor decorations were known as luminary lights. From the 1970s to the early-2000s luminaries were a part of every local Christmas Eve celebration in Long Green, the rural northern Maryland neighborhood where I grew up. Long Green residents carefully coordinated the lighting of the luminaries sometimes months ahead of Christmas Eve with their ultimate goal of making sure that candles blazed all night long until sunrise on Christmas morning regardless of what the elements might hurl at them.
If some in the community were away for the holidays or older neighbors were physically challenged and unable to properly arrange their luminary lights, able-bodied neighbors would volunteer to do it all for them. Sometimes the luminary lights would be set up for several nights after Christmas burning through New Year’s Eve and the night of January 1st. After that the light containers were finally extinguished, collected, and stored away until the next year.
The tradition of carefully-arranged Christmas lanterns began as a 17th-century Spanish Catholic ritual in The Philippines involving star-shaped Chinese lanterns known as parols. In the early days of colonialism, the American southwest built upon the tradition by arranging tiny bonfires in paths called luminaria which served similar religious purposes. With the invention of mass-produced paper lunch bags and plastic milk cartons, the traditional bonfires were replaced by candles. These were called farolitos by communities in the desert regions of the U.S., and later called luminary lights by Americans living outside of the southwest.
Whether glowing through the cold winter nights of Long Green or the intense heat of high deserts and tropical islands, the meaning behind luminaries stays the same: these lights symbolically lit the way for The Holy Family aka Mary and Joseph as they made their journey to the hallowed Bethlehem manger where Jesus Christ would be born. A more whimsical interpretation: I recall some imaginative adult relatives and neighbors in Long Green claiming that these lights helped to guide Santa Claus and his sleigh full of presents to houses where especially well-behaved children lived.
In 1997 I moved out of Long Green and into my first apartment in Towson, MD. After that I bounced around northern Maryland, Baltimore City, and the Bronx, NY, and toured the U.S. playing live music from the late-1990s on into the 2010s, but I’d always return home every Christmas Eve to spend the holidays in Long Green with my mom. A high point of every visit was being greeted by the majestic lines of luminary lights traversing every last corner of the neighborhood.
As the 21st century got closer the number of Long Green neighbors taking part in the tradition dwindled. By 2002 only a few hundred luminary lights remained, a paltry sum compared to the thousands you’d see glowing throughout the late-20th century, from main thoroughfares to even the most obscure cul-de-sacs and courts of Long Green. By the 2010s the majority of homes in the area featured festive multi-colored electronic Christmas displays. The dream-like tranquility of luminaries was replaced by dayglo light shows, LED contraptions, and the droning hiss of giant balloon characters (Santa, The Grinch, Frosty The Snowman, holiday themed variations of Disney creations, etc.).
It took a lot of time and energy for the community to pull off such a giant expression of holiday cheer. Outside of the contemporary art world, an ever-growing 21st century movement away from religion and ritual has made it tough for any large unified effort to create mystic spectacles that rely on opaque fire light. The luminaria and farolito lights no longer dominate southwestern Christmas celebrations as they did in the Spanish colonial era. Nonetheless, there are a few Southwesterners who remain passionate about keeping the tradition alive, and that fact gives me hope for the future.
As for Long Green, even though its heyday of decorative glory may be gone, I’ll always cherish my memories of the luminary lights that transformed a humble corner of rural Maryland into a glowing monument to spirituality.