As I reflect over the 17 years of living downtown, I realize there is a quiet sense of missing out for those who bypass downtown Grand Junction in the weeks following Thanksgiving. For me, each year, the season arrives with the same sense of novelty, as though I am witnessing it anew.

The season really begins in October when no one else is noticing but I am because when the cottonwoods along Main Street finally release their leaves and the sidewalks fill with brittle gold, I know soon block by block, from the Two Rivers Convention Center east to the Avalon Theatre, the city will begin to prepare itself for what’s to follow.

I have front-row seats—nearly eye to eye with the men suspended in cherry pickers who hoist armloads of lights into the bare branches. I am aware of how unaware they are of me, yet how fully aware of them I am.  It is a familiar ritual, full of anticipation, and one I never grow tired of witnessing.  To think how many lights it might take, and how tedious a job to wrap each tree so perfectly–their handy work will remain dormant for the time being.  But if I am lucky, I will catch that one evening between now and Thanksgiving when a test run of the lights happens.  I am spoiled by my little secret show of lights.  

Thanksgiving weekend:   Across the street, people are gathering around a tree as big as a sumo wrestler strung with hundreds of Christmas lights.  Like so much of my life on Main Street,  hidden in my quiet sanctuary above the festivities, I am aware of them, and they are unaware of me.  As I sit in my bay window thinking of Christmas Vacation and Clark Griswold, I feel that same childlike anticipation as I cross my fingers, hoping that the tree will light up just as it always has.  And when it’s dark enough cheers and laughter fill the air as the tree as big as a sumo wrestler and all the downtown trees burst into holiday cheer for the first time. Carolers take center stage. From my private front row seat, I am awestruck again by this magnificent moment that kicks off the season.

Brooke arrives every year just days before the first weekend of December to polish the fall grime from the windows. He’s been cleaning our windows for years now and he knows the December timeline by heart. And when the Parade of Lights comes through that first weekend of December, it isn’t the floats that move me most, it’s the joy of watching a community collectively declare that the season has arrived.  You know you are never too old to love the parade of lights. After all, who cares if it’s little old Grand Junction’s parade of lights? It’s so deeply human!  It’s magical! And I am enchanted.  

By day, holiday shoppers stroll the streets. By night, trees glow, storefronts shimmer, and Main Street takes on a softer character, illuminated against the long evenings of the Western Slope.  On weekends, I hear the clip-clop of the horse-drawn carriage echoing down the street, adding to the splendor.  It’s like living in an ever-changing scene daily filling my eyes with candy.

At night, lying in bed with thoughts spilling out of my mind, I can see the top of just one tree glowing through my window. It’s three stories tall and the best part—I didn’t have to decorate it.  Its light trickles gently into the darkness—steady, unassuming—a quiet counterpoint of warmth to the cold settling in along the Colorado River corridor.  The holiday season is indescribable, romantic, satisfying here on Main Street. And nobody knows we live, work, and play in this beautiful one-of-a-kind dwelling. I pinch myself another time.