Public Art of the Week

Drive around Lansing, especially downtown, and the city lights up at night during the Christmas season.

Even the grey battleship parking lights glow in the spirit of the holiday. This year’s state Christmas tree is spectacular in bright all red lights (offending some anti-Trumpers), and across the street in the lobby of City Hall an all-white tree graces the lobby with a metal Menorah nearby.

Using lights to celebrate Christmas can be traced to Germany in the 1500s, when homes were decorated with Christmas trees lit by real candles attached to the limbs. This tradition, albeit extremely dangerous, continued until cities and homes became electrified starting in the late 1800s. Even today we celebrate those candle-lit days with flicker-like candles like placed in windows.

At some point, Christmas lighting moved outside with luminaria lighting paths on Christmas Eve, which is still a tradition. Downtown may have even begun its Silver Bells tradition with luminaria lining the downtown shopping area in 1985 and 1986.

A 1913 editorial in the Lansing State Journal proposed that Lansing erect a “Municipal Christmas Tree,” and during Christmas week that year the first tree was erected on the Capitol grounds, according to public historians Timothy Bowman and Andrew MacLaney. The earliest Christmas trees appeared in churches. The lit candles represent Jesus, “the light of the world.” Slowly but surely, the Christmas tree became a symbol of a secular celebration. Advent wreaths with real fir boughs and lit candles (three white, one pink) were staples of most Catholic homes during the four weeks prior to Christmas.

Outdoor lighting on homes can be traced to the boom of the suburbs where otherwise plain tract houses glistened with lighting in the early 1960s and even before. I have a plywood Frosty the Snowman that my dad made in the 1940s, covered with fresh boughs and lights, that he hung on my grandmother’s porch for years. Today, families still pile into SUVs to drive around looking at Christmas decorations.

Today, we use giant blow-up Santas, Grinches and and snowmen planted on front lawns that during the day are deflated into plastic globs. And Christmas decorating exploits have made their way into movies like “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”