An effort to light up the night

The text message arrived in the middle of November via WhatsApp: “Do we have any volunteers to help with the luminary night this year?” asked our homeowner association president.

Several of the residents of our pocket neighborhood responded. This will be the third year for the Rockwater area’s luminaria, usually staged on an evening just before Christmas.

It’s one of several events that area folks pitch in on; the other is a charming Halloween Trail-or-Treat stroll on the afternoon of Oct. 31 with little kids and their parents and grandparents dressed in costumes and accompanied by dressed-up dogs, strollers, wagons, and family who are showered with compliments and candy as they loop along the Arkansas River Trail and around the circle of Rockwater houses. I’m not much of a Halloween fan, but these little ones are cute, and they have the best time, although Teddy the Aussiedoodle seemed not to fully embrace his coronavirus costume.

The luminaria for Porches at Rockwater was enthusiastically embraced by its residents in 2019; it was the first year living here for most of us. The area’s developers supplied crisp little white paper bags and tiny votive candles (some of them the burning kind, others battery operated); we stole over to a nearby construction site and loaded up on scoops of sand to anchor the bags to the ground.

A makeshift production line formed on the afternoon of the display to fill up the bags, fold down their tops, and trundle them via our Radio Flyer wagon for placement along the serpentine path through the grassy commons connecting our houses.

The same was going on in what some Porches residents refer to as “the big houses” that face the River Trail. When darkness fell, the votive candles were lit (after somebody found a longreach igniter; nobody has matches any more), resulting in a soft radiance on the path along the Arkansas River. Residents walked to several stations along the prettily lit route to enjoy hot chocolate and cider, sweets and snacks, and each other’s company.

Plenty of photos and videos chronicled the event in publications and social media.

The lights glimmered overnight— some in steadily bright white, others in a flickering yellow hue—and were collected the next morning. We carefully emptied and folded the bags and collected the burning candles to use the next year; the battery ones wouldn’t have enough juice to return and would have to be replaced.

The second season got a little too organized for my liking. The production lines in the afternoons were much more rigid. Some residents didn’t like the variety of color in the votives’ light—some glowed yellowy, others white and at different intensities—and preferred that everyone use more uniform battery-powered candles.

Although it was pleasant, the carefully matched lights were dimmer than the natural candles, and didn’t stand out against the darkness as well. Photos and videos didn’t have the same zip.

The hot chocolate, which came from Williams-Sonoma thanks to a resident who works there, was terrific, though.

We’ll see how this year’s event unfurls; the first planning session was held Nov. 10. I’ve heard that uniform battery-powered lights were ordered way back in the summer, after being carefully vetted for proper brightness and staying power. Someone with organizational competence is in charge of mustering refreshments and volunteers to serve them. A strict schedule of events will probably be announced.

Too much management, too much professionalism, too much supervision can ruin an evolving informal tradition. An example is the Tiny Desk Contest on public radio, which started out in 2008 with everyday people singing and plunking out self-written songs in their bedrooms and backyards on acoustic guitars.

Now it seems all the entries are produced in a state-of-the-art studio with first-rate four-part harmonies and lots of instrumentation. The results are way too slick and hyper-competent for my taste, and have lost their sense of spontaneity. I like the plunkers better.

Along with the mismatched array of lights along the River Trail on a winter evening just before Christmas.