Lighting up the Holidays

One of my favorite memories from this Christmas will be the Chinese sky lanterns that my sister Erin and her husband Myron brought us from Taiwan.

Christmas eve night, we wrote our wishes and dreams for the new year on the red paper balloons.

We bundled up and headed across the street to the park, our feet crunching on the icy snow.

We laughed nervously, expecting the cops to maybe show up, for lighting things on fire. :)

Myron lit the first lantern with his lighter- holding the flame to a small paper disk on the bottom of the balloon. It took awhile to get going, and slowly, magically, the paper lantern began to fill, and then float.

When the lantern is ready to fly, you can feel it on your fingertips, pulling up to the sky. You see the words you wrote, glowing with fire; you feel the weight of those hopes and dreams lift into the dark abyss.

And then you watch the other lanterns, those of your loved ones, lighting and rising into the night, growing smaller and smaller but still visible miles and miles away.

The cops never did show up. Actually, what happened was that cars driving by the park started stopping- many, many cars, wanting to watch the beauty of the lanterns in their ascent on this most holiest of nights.

******************************************************************************

I do have some video of this event (a very brief one below). It was really an awesome thing to do. These are the same lanterns used in the Yi Peng festival in Thailand, something I've always wanted to see. You apparently can buy the balloons online. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this takes off in the United States, as it's a truly magical experience.