Earlier this week I wrote about my family’s recent trip to the Houston Zoo at night to see the Christmas zoo lights. They were spectacular, which isn’t really surprising because there were over two million lights to behold. At the other end of the spectrum is the theory that less is more. Enter “Blinkies,” a variation on twinkling Christmas lights that someone created in my hometown of Kernersville, North Carolina. This video shows Blinkies in the trees along Main Street in Kernersville. They do seem to have a soothing effect during a stressful season, don’t you think?

So this week’s haiku theme is Christmas lights, holiday lights, zoo lights, etc. Do you prefer to illuminate both the night sky and the windows of your next door neighbors? Do you choose instead to place one electric candle in each of the front windows, hearkening back to early American simplicity? Wherever you fall on that spectrum, tell us about it by writing one verse with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line.

My haiku refers both to the house that I knew as a child and to the Christmas Eve candlelight services at Home Moravian Church in the City of Winston-Salem:

Candles in windows
and a Moravian star
over the door. Home.