It’s 2025 – a year of trending this, and viral that, where everything’s curated, aesthetically pleasing, and expected to be Insta-worthy.
Your home is supposed to look as though no one actually lives in it. Realistic, right?
Driving down a familiar road from my childhood, most of the homes still look the same.
Porches with plants hanging from hooks, dogs sunbathing on the sidewalk, tangled Texas trees reaching over cracked fences, and near-perfectly cut grass. But one house stands out from the others.
This house screams Christmas in July.
Dangly, cheesy lights — the kind that flicker red, green, and blue — are still proudly strung along the front porch.
They’re shaped like teardrops, but they look anything but sad. They blink in a seemingly nonsensical order. Looking at them brings me back to a simpler time.
Why are these lights still up? It’s August.
Maybe the neighbor just hasn’t had time to take them down. Maybe they work late. Maybe they have bigger things to worry about. Maybe they simply forgot.
Or — maybe it’s something else.
Maybe they left them up for this exact moment. So that someone like me, someone a little tired, a little lost in the world of adulting, might slow to a stop and smile.
Maybe it’s for the kids walking home from their friend’s house, a reminder that magic still exists. Maybe it’s for the ones who didn’t get to celebrate the holidays, or for the ones who needed a second one this year because the first one wasn’t all too great.
Maybe it’s rebellion.
Rebellion against a world that’s burnt out, overworked, and probably too tired to hang the lights in the first place.
Rebellion against rules that tell us to take them down on January 1st and act like everything’s fine the rest of the year.
Maybe people are tired of pretending everything’s fine. Maybe what we need is more people who are willing to break the mold — to keep their silly lights up year-round.
In a world that feels scary and a little bit broken, that asks us to fit in, keep quiet, and stay in line, I want to thank you, neighbor. Thank you for holding onto joy, as simple as it is.
Thank you for keeping your Christmas lights up. You remind us that joy can exist in all seasons, and that the smallest things can still serve as acts of resistance.
