For Wilshire Baptist Church
Getting in the car to look at Christmas lights has been a lifelong tradition for both LeAnn and me. We did it with our families growing up, and we’ve done it together the past 10 years. Not every year, but often enough, and it took a new twist this year when we drove out to see the Christmas lights at Lake Tawakoni State Park.
In case you didn’t know — I didn’t know until I got an email about it — many of Texas’ state parks host drive-through Christmas light tours. They invite overnight campers to come in and decorate their campsites, and then the public is invited on selected nights to view the decorations. Lake Tawakoni State Park calls theirs the “Twinkle Tour,” and being just an hour away, we decided to check it out. My biggest fear driving out there in the dark was that we’d find there was nothing to it — that perhaps the campers didn’t take it seriously, didn’t decorate or didn’t even show up. But my fears were completely unfounded.
For the carload price of just $5 and minimal instructions from the ranger at the front gate — “just follow the two loop roads through the campsites” — we spent 30 minutes amazed and entertained as we drove past the park’s 78 campsites, most of which were decorated. Imagine what you see this time of year on a typical Dallas street but it’s been done outside of campers, travel trailers, pop-ups, lean-tos and tents. Some were just decorated with strings of lights and some had inflatables bobbing merrily in the night breeze. We recognized the infamous leg lamp from “A Christmas Story” at one stop, and at another we found lights strung around a full-size “Big Boy” statue from the old Kip’s restaurant chain. At several sites they were projecting Christmas movies on make-shift screens, and yes, we saw some nativities too.
There were just a few other cars making the tour so it wasn’t crowded at all, but we had to be careful as we came upon clumps of pedestrians strolling from campsite to campsite. We don’t know if they were people who had come in like us but parked and got out to tour on foot, or if they were campers who were making the rounds to see each other’s decorations. Probably a little of both.
At a few campsites, the people were part of the display. We saw a green Grinch posing for pictures with folks, and a human Christmas tree at another. The theme at that site was “Christmas Tree Farm,” and the woman in the tree costume was holding a bowl of candy canes so we rolled our windows down and got candy and a conversation. We learned that this was her second year to decorate, and one of the motivations is that there is a competition. There’s no prize to win, but the woman was a little frustrated.
“I’ve never won squat, and I don’t think I’ll do it next year,” she said. “The ladies at the park office came down to judge the decorations this afternoon before dark. I think the people driving through at night should get to judge too.”
If that were the case, I’m not sure who would get my vote. All the displays were terrific and worthy of praise for their efforts, but I think the real winners were people like us who took a chance and drove out on a Saturday night to see what it was about. And what it was about was just people getting out and showing creativity, ingenuity and hospitality when they could have been at home watching football games or movies or whatever.
I don’t know if the people at the campsites decorate every year as apparently the Christmas tree lady did, but I’m grateful for the work they did to create an experience that brought some surprise and wonder back to Christmas. I’m all in for long-standing holiday traditions, but it’s good to break out and do something new now and again. We put two more of these tours that are close by on our calendar just in case we couldn’t get out to Lake Tawakoni. I don’t know if we’ll drive out to them or not, but LeAnn likes what she calls “adventures,” which are when you go do something that is uncertain and unexpected.
Thinking about that, LeAnn has never been camping. I wonder if she would consider that an “adventure” too – especially if we joined the Christmas party and decorated our campsite? That’s definitely something to think about for next year.