Country Christmas

Out in the country there is this little farm house and an older gentleman who loved Christmas.  Every year he would put up this huge display all around his front yard, his side yard, on the barn, near the silos, and through the surrounding fields.

It was a Christmas Tradition for families in my town to go out the mile or so outside of town to this farm and see the lights every year.  It was gorgeous and really got you in the Christmas sprit.  My sister started taking me when she first got her license and we would slowly drive through the farm yard and see all the lights, pointing at the ones we loved, and ohhing and awwing over everything. 

When she moved and I got my license I started taking my youngest cousins, Bria and Brad,  (same ones from the Annual Wrapping Paper Ball Fight post) to see the light display.  We would blast Christmas music and sing along and once we got out to the farm we would slowly go through the display.  This became an annual thing before we went to the church for the candle light service and before our Wrapping Paper Ball Fights. 

Every year it was something we looked forward too, and couldn’t wait to bust out of the house and see it again.  The display never really changed, things were placed in the same place, and I don’t think this farmer ever added new lights (since it was already really big) but we didn’t care, it was wonderful to go and see.  My small town usually has snow on Christmas eve, and usually the power goes out right around the time for the candle light service in my church there (very cool if I do say so for our service all by candle light) but something that my cousins and I would have to beat before it would go out so we could see the display in the country. 

Then sometime one year the farmer passed away, it was in our local newspaper about weather or not the display would be shown one last time, since the farmer passed before Christmas time.  His family wrote in that they would put it up one last time and then the farm would not have it again.  Once I heard this, it was my main goal that Christmas.  My friends and I went out there and saw the lights, my mom and I went out there and saw the lights, and my cousins and I were out there Christmas eve to see the lights before that candle light service.

It was amazingly beautiful and the image of  the picture perfect light display will always be a photograph in my mind.  It was Christmas card perfect.  It was bittersweet, the last drive through with my cousins.  It was sad to break it to them, that this display would not be there ever again, but it only made that one last trip even more special. 

Since then I have seen light displays at houses that would blow that farm out of this world, but it doesn’t matter, that light display on that farm will always take the gold medal in my heart for some of the great Christmas memories of mine.



Now my horrible picture that does no justice to what the farm really looked like, but it was bright and gorgeous and just very Christmasy! :) (There were a lot more light displays and Christmas objects throughout the farm land)