Well hello, stranger
Before you say anything, I know it's February and Christmas is long past us, some people are probably already preparing for Christmas 2023! Nevertheless, I wanted to share a few Christmas light photos with you all. I'm a fan of colourful lights it's memorizing, I can't play games on a rainbow keyboard since I end up staring at the lights and not playing the game.
Growing up, we would always go on a night drive around the 20th of December. This way we missed all the other people and you could spend hours driving around looking at all the Christmas lights. This tradition started to fade as more and more people picked Mossel Bay as their December holiday spot. Luckily for us, Danabay is still quiet and many people don't know about the place. We just don't have many lights. It's still worth a drive through town in my opinion! Last year one of the houses made the news!
Our first stop
Our first stop was close to home, it is located just up the road from us, it was a bit of a drive and we spotted other houses we wanted to stop by as well (given this road has about 700 houses 🤣). I spoke to the owner and she mentioned that some light signs they made themselves, some were bought over the years, and others donated. She started decorating with lights when she moved to the area, seeing as we get a lot of tourists and it makes her happy to see children and other find happiness in the lights.
A few of the house from the street. You can see there are many different lights and no particular theme. the theme is Christmas lights, colour and happiness!
This is one of the signs that they made themselves. I can't begin to imagine how it seems complicated. MERRY CHRISTMAS! (It's late I know).
The Snowmen
I know I said there was no set them, but there was a very category of things. I went on a hunt for all the snowmen and came across these three.
This one was part of their handmade collection. They used giant styrofoam balls to build this fella. He also got a nice top hat and a carrot nose.
This little snowman had a green scarf and red mittens. He's holding a little present, but the lights have stopped working. I also think this photo came out pretty well.
This is one of those solar panel garden lights. It's a little snowman! There were a few of them around the garden, but this one wasn't working and gave me an opportunity to take a nice photo.
The Reindeer
These two reindeer were also handmade! I think they were the star of the show. Just look at the Christmas decor on their antlers. They have little pinecones as noses. I think this is creativity to the max!
They also had a few of these giant reindeer lights around the garden. Some of them had moving heads, so it felt like they were watching us.
I was amused by this one. It's a little blown-up Santa in a sleigh. His little face closes up was priceless.
The.. the... the... THE GRINCH!
Now that is a Christmas movie that will never get old.
All dressed up and ready to steal your Christmas. Honestly, I would freak out if I looked out the window at night and saw someone sitting on my porch, seeing as I would forget that it's just a fake Grinch 😂.
There was also cutout Grinch decorations on the gate. These were also handmade. I'm telling you these people have some skills.
Something worse than the Grinch...
Yes, I can hear you asking wats worse than the Grinch stealing Christmas... Well if you're a South African the answer is Eskom. We have had load shedding for nearly 15 years now, some years were worse than others and 2022 was one of them. In the past, we would not have load-shedding during the December holidays, but unfortunately, this was not one of those years.
The owners of the house had improvised and bought a generator to keep to lights on during these extreme 4-hour load-shedding schedules. They put up a donation box to help pay for running the generator.
This old man was just as defeated as us with Eskom. But he still tried to enjoy Christmas happiness.
Our second stop
So just like any town, Danabay has a "high class" area. It is close to the beach, the even are a lot bigger and these houses are huge (well for me this counts as a large house 😅). This was the house featured in the newspaper. By the time we got the see it, they have already started taking down some of the lights. We were still able to enjoy what was left.
A front view of the second house we stopped at. Here you can see the hanging lights from the balcony.
They placed this reindeer and his sleigh next to a cactus, so it looks like he is enjoying a much needed late night snack.
These two on the other hand decided that the fresh leaves of the tree would be a much more enjoyable snack.
A dove, bringing us peace when we need it most.
They had decorated the large window in the front of the house with a few lights. I must say I think these lights are gorgeous. I imagen it being at Hogwards in the Great Hall for some reason.
On our way back home
I mentioned that we saw other houses when we started our trip. Some have only a few lights, others were hard to get quality photos of and also... Since Danabay has a ton of hills, we couldn't find others. We would see it in the distance and try to figure out the route, only to end up nowhere close to it.
I liked the balcony decorations the most. This looked a look like shiny gumdrops and I love gumdrops.
This house didn't have many lights, but the reindeer was so bright that it didn't need more lights.
And of course, the round tree with the star was a big win on my side. It's just perfect, I think it belongs in an animation movie. Who said Christmas trees had to be triangle shaped?
Thank you for stopping by and enjoying the adventure with me. I hope it brought you a bit of Christmas/ Holiday joy during February! I'm not saying we should keep Christmas decorations up all year round, but decoration lights should not only be saved for Christmas! I think they will light up our lives during the year as well. Untill next time stay safe!
Photo used for the cover photo