Spreading a little light in dark times

The spirit of Christmas is shining bright along Laura Lane on Port Washington’s west side.

Virtually every house on the street is awash in colorful holiday lights — a display that started almost immediately after Halloween and continues today.

“In this year of Covid, you have to find your own joy. This brings us joy,” Laura Ashley, 1723 Laura La., said. 

“No matter what your religion, you put up the lights and they make you happy.”   

Her neighbor Jon Armstrong agreed.

“It’s been such a difficult year. Everyone’s going through such a tough time,” he said. “This year everybody started (putting up their lights) a little early.”

And in doing so, they started a friendly neighborhood competition, he said.

“It continues to evolve,” Armstrong said, noting he finished lighting his house at 1740 Laura La. late last month “but I might have a little more work to do.”

He’s already installed thousands of lights on his house and the bushes outside, but he said that after seeing his neighbors’ light shows he’s looking at adding more lights, either around the windows or perhaps candles in the windows.

“I’m definitely trying to channel my inner Clark Griswold,” Armstrong said, referring to the Chevy Chase character in the “Christmas Vacation” movie.

Ashley is the unspoken leader of the lighting campaign, having put her lights up almost immediately after Halloween.

This is the first year in recent times she’s been able to put up the lights, she said. Last year, her mother was being treated for pancreatic cancer — today there are no signs of the cancer in her system, Ashley said — and the year before that she had a broken leg.

“Then came 2020,” she said. “We’re all staying in. We don’t go to stores. We don’t meet up with our neighbors. We don’t go anywhere. I said we just really need some joy,” she said.

So after Halloween, she decided to put out her holiday lights and urged her neighbors to do the same. And one by one, they did.

“It was kind of like a virus, one to another to another,” Ashley said. “We’re having a blast. Everyone yells to each other — ‘Where did you get those nutcrackers?’”

Armstrong said it didn’t take much to get him involved. Even when he and his wife Courtney lived in an apartment in West Allis, they decorated the exterior of their unit and, after bringing home a “rambunctious” 6-month old Labrador retriever, decorated a tree and set it on their front patio, winning second place in a lighting contest.

“She (Courtney) keeps telling me to get more stuff,” Armstrong said.

What’s especially nice about the light show is that it is a collective effort that has grown organically, he said. 

“It’s not something we necessarily talked about. It’s just been an unspoken thing — it’s been a tough year, so let’s spread some joy,” he said.

Armstrong said he’d love to see the light show turn into a tradition, one that could do good in the community, like the much larger Candy Cane Lane in West Allis that raises money for the MACC fund.

“This isn’t necessarily Candy Cane Lane, but could we put together our own Christmas Light Lane?” he asked. “We’re not there, but it would be awesome. 

“For right now, we’re happy.”

The neighbors agree it’s been a nice way not just to bring joy to everyone but also to keep the neighbors in touch with one another, even if they have to stay their distance because of the pandemic.

“We’re a really close neighborhood,” Courtney Armstrong said, noting a number of the neighbors work at Froedtert Hospital or the Medical College of Wisconsin. “We help each other when it’s needed. We’re keeping our distance from each other right now, but this is a safe way to keep in touch.”

The light show has brought joy not just to the neighbors but to the people passing through the Bley Park subdivision.

“We get a lot of runners and you can see them slow down to look,” Ashley said. “You hear the little kids walking by and they’re all going, ‘Wow.’”