Each holiday season, the City of Hastings creates a holiday light tour map for residents to drive around and spread the joy of the season through decorations. Residents can add their address to the map for free and it is one of my favorite traditions to cover. All you need to do to find it is head on over to our Facebook Page, I’ve shared it there.
Driving around with Christmas tunes cranked up a little louder on the radio, stopping to take the just right, long exposure picture of the hours and hours of other people’s creativity is relaxing to me. I love seeing the different ways people choose to share their love of the holiday season. Some go the mostly inflatable route, others go with a lot of lights and some even get music, video projections and choreographed lights.
This year it was a little extra special to be able to appreciate the hard work of others because there just was not enough time or energy on my end to get out and decorate the house. That was always something my dad and I did, sometimes my now adult kids, or brother-in-law, sister and niece would help. But with dad gone, it was tough to go through each light string to test them, or to get up on the ladder and hang them. I know I should have, but I needed the year off, so to be able to sit and enjoy the displays from others, filled that gap nicely.
There is no way we can do these displays justice in print with snapping photos of each one on the list plus the dozens of others that do not submit their displays to the list, but I would feel awful if we didn’t run pictures of some of these displays to convince you to go out and see them for yourselves. Hop in the car, grab the kids, add the grandparents if you can, toss on 107.9 FM or your favorite holiday music playlist and spend an hour or so driving around town to admire the work of our neighbors.
Make sure you stop at one of my favorites, 816 5th Street West, and a new favorite section on Forest Street between 15th and 17th streets, or up in the 15th to 23rd streets neighborhood by the golf course around Westview Drive and Southview Drive. You could probably spend an hour just in that part of town if you wanted. Oh, and if you see a dark blue chevy pickup randomly stop to take a picture of your light display, it’s just me, shoot me an email and I will get you a copy of the pic, and thank you for spreading some extra holiday cheer!
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!