Blue Is The Colour of Alone

I found a couple of strings of Christmas Lights on sale. They were solid blue. For the first time in many years I've now put up some holiday lights. And they bring back memories.

Back in the 1960s most everything Christmas started about December 1st. No Christmas advertising, no Christmas carols (on the radio or in stores), etc. appeared before that date—at least not in the small, northern Canadian town in which I grew up.

I had a paper route and, during the winter, it could be a brutal undertaking for a child (I started the route in 1965 at about 8 years of age).

The decorating of houses with Christmas lights became a high point of my life in December. At that latitude (56 degrees North) the days were very short and the delivery of papers often took place in twilight or darkness ... in the cold, in the snow.

Suddenly, (or so it seemed) many houses sported lines of coloured bulbs, a cheery sight for a young boy with a heavy pack of papers in a bag slung over his shoulder. Some of them blinked, though most did not. Some entire lines blinked on and off while others had only random bulbs that blinked. Some houses showed multicoloured lines, others sported traditional red/green alternating bulbs, while some few displayed banks of a single colour only. All had their place.

My favourite, by far, consisted of only one colour—blue. A bank of blue bulbs gleaming in the night, shining off the white snow all around, attracted my eyes like no others. That blue spoke to my soul. Words fail me when I try to describe what I felt, for I'm not sure that I really know. Out there in the cold winter night, often there was but one human presence on the street. Me. Windows would mostly be curtained or frosted over and all that spoke of life one could find only within. Few cars prowled the roads and fewer people.

Then Christmas lights brought the night to life, and the blue were the colour of alone—which I was, walking down the empty streets, delivering the daily paper.

Today, over four decades after giving up my paper route, I find that the Christmas Season does not have what it once had. It begins too early; the old carols no longer thrill and the advertisements ... let's just say I find them disheartening. Yet, should I see a bank of blue lights in the night (though I live where only rarely does snow cover the ground) I find myself transported back in time to once again experience the quiet joy of existing together with the lights, alone but not lonely. Blue is the colour of Alone and, for me, peace and belonging.