WINTERHAVEN

Not far from my brother’s home in Tucson, AZ is the Winterhaven neighborhood. Over the past 74 years, for two weeks during the Christmas holiday, they host the Winterhaven Festival of Lights. Every night between 6pm-10pm, you can walk or take a hayride through the streets and view the spectacular lights and decorations that homeowners have adorned their properties. Even the mature Aleppo pines are strung with lights. Aside from the wagon rides, no vehicle traffic is allowed. One parks in adjacent neighborhoods and hikes in. It is truly a festive event.

Not everyone in the neighborhood is enamored with the event. It’s curious to see, amongst the house after house fully decked out, there is a dark house unadorned. Perhaps they go elsewhere for the holidays. Or maybe, there lives The Holiday Curmudgeon. Invariably an old boy who does not interact with his neighbors and has no family other than his ever-suffering pooch. He loathes this time of year especially all the commotion. “And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! There’s one thing I hate! All the NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!” he growls at his dog quoting a famous grinch. He is quite thankful for his headphones to watch YouTube in his drape-darkened study and eat his Stouffer’s pot pie in peace.

One of the most charming part of Winterhaven is the Wishing Tree. In 2000, a 7th grader resident was given a homework assignment: are people as materialistic and self-absorbed as the press implies? The family had a large tree in their front yard so the family devised a plan-have strips of paper available for folks to write their wishes and these strips would be looped together and dangled from the tree. The first year brought over 2000 wishes with 73% wishing for others more than themselves. The top five wishes were peace, love, happiness, health and to have a merry Christmas. They now average 18,000 wishes per year.

My first experience was during their early years. I was spending the holidays with my family (my parents lived in Tucson as well at the time) following the death of my first wife. No one had mentioned the tree, I had simply come across it while walking the neighborhood. Near the tree was a young man in formal attire playing Bach on a cello, his top hat on the ground for tips. I wrote a wish and added it to the chain. A zephyr stirred the linked papers, sending the wishes skyward. Sometimes wishes come true-mine did seven years later.

Festival of Lights

The Wishing Tree