Shoreacres doesn’t draw crowds for the holidays. It’s too small for parades, too quiet for festivals, too tucked against the bay to pull in outsiders looking for spectacle. The rhythm of December here belongs to the porches and front yards.
Walking down Bayou Drive, I see the same story told in different languages of light. One house lines its roof with white bulbs so precise they could have been measured with a ruler. Next door, colored strands knot around a leaning pine, blinking in uneven rhythm, stubbornly cheerful. Inflatable Santas bob in the damp air, snowmen collapse on their sides, waiting to be revived with another blast of air.
I stop and take it in. These are the same houses where political slogans sprout in spring, where “Back the Blue” flags wave in June, where bumper stickers for Trump cling to pickup bumpers. Nothing has changed. The symbols of division remain. Yet in December, lights drape over them, not erasing but muting.
A little fog collects off Trinity Bay after sunset, turning the glow soft and close. A neighbor on a ladder swears at a burned-out bulb and laughs when his wife hands him a replacement. A kid pedals past with a plastic antler headband wobbling over his ears. No one is healed. No one is converted. But for an hour, the town agrees on brightness.
The lights don’t fix anything. They declare something older than politics: the refusal to let the dark stand unchallenged. That’s enough for tonight, and sometimes enough to get through the week.