Holiday Peace Light

Prior to moving to Brooklyn, I lived in a western Massachusetts college town for a fairly long time.  It was a small house on a street that had been built and developed mostly in the 1970’s.  On that street I met a neighbor who was known simply by the vowel “E.”

E was a former professor who, were I to blog about him, would require more than a few posts.  His life was fascinating and the sense of vitality in this retiree was an inspiration.  He rented his spare rooms to college students, who favored the hospitality more for his eclectic book collection than the accommodations.  Rarely a morning passed, even in winter, when you wouldn’t see E’s lanky septuagenarian frame loping down the street on his morning jog.

But what I remember most about E was the thirty foot peace sign he had created from Christmas tree lights strung around nails on one side of his two-story split-level, partly hidden in the trees.  It was a permanent feature of his house, though not particularly noticeable most of the year since it remained dark except for the holiday season.  The comfort and wonder never diminished as we’d drive down the street, round the corner to see E’s peace sign come into view, and know we were almost home.  It was both a landmark and tradition for us during our decade in that house and we always looked forward to the first time we’d see it lit and the holiday became real.

After moving to Brooklyn, NY — not long after George W. Bush was first elected — we were delighted with our new digs and urban front yard and decided to create a peace sign of our own to dress up the house for our first December.  We knew we’d miss E’s version and couldn’t do it justice, but I bought a few sets of white lights from the plentiful dollar stores on Flatbush Avenue.  Llewellyn fashioned a number of white wire clothes hangers into a five-foot oval with angled crosspieces, and wound the lights into a respectable peace sign.  It was hung in the front of the house, outside the bay window.

Partly because of the emerging sentiment (the United States had embarked on the war in Iraq not long before) and as silent homage to E, we turned on the lights.  While we reveled personally in its meaning and substance, we never anticipated the reactions of our neighbors.

It’s hard to get more diverse than Brooklyn, with people of all races, cultures and religions, and our little block presented a fairly harmonious microcosm of its borough.  As I think back to that first year we lit our simple display, I cannot help but recall both the neighbors I knew as well as total strangers who just knocked at the front door to comment on the sign.  It was all positive feedback and often led to discussion about the war and the administration, but ultimately was a catalyst for new acquaintances and friends.  Our neighbors across the street told us how much they enjoyed the peace sign and how they looked forward to the evening when the lights were on.  It was never intended to be solely a political statement — after all, consider how many holiday cards you see imprinted with the word “Peace” — but its antiwar message clearly resonated as loudly as the familiar holiday sentiment.  We hung our DIY peace sign in Brooklyn for six years during the holiday season, until it was time to move on.

When we left Brooklyn a few months ago to move to upstate New York, many neighbors — when they said goodbye and wished us well — mentioned they would miss the peace sign.  It was then I realized the full circle of it, how one person can impact others even if it is a simple visual “feel good” statement.  I’m hoping someone on our former street in Brooklyn steps up and mounts their own home-made peace sign this season.

Now making our home in this small upstate town, friendly neighbors all — though you’d never mistake it for Flatbush — we have reserved several white wire coat hangers for the next peace sign.  I still need to buy the strings of lights, maybe enough for a ten-foot diameter expression.  This is our tradition now, as much as it belonged to our former neighbor E, and we look forward to the reactions of our new neighbors.  With a little luck, perhaps the ripples from this tradition may expand to touch others, and carry on.

Holiday Peace Light

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by SC Johnson’s Right@Home.  The Right at home contest was seen at a HomeBlogs.net Featured Story: The “Home for the Holidays” Contest