'twas a Few Days After Christmas ~ Culebra Green Flash Included

Christmas on Culebra is a lit up event around the barrios - so we took a driveabout to see!

This Santa sang and swayed his way into my laughing heart.

I'd have taken more video but he was getting visitors, it seemed rude.

I had the idea originally to brighten up the season by stringing up lights and making Christmas festive, but in the end, that didn't happen. I'm so glad that plenty of people decided otherwise!

First, to see in real life what I'd seen on social media, kids included. 

It was impressive!

A little winter wonderland at 78 degrees.

While the date of Christmas was past, holiday brightness was (and is) still shining

I don't know what happened to poor Santa here, unless a long game of 

soccer just tired him out completely. Or an unlucky kick, but I'll go with tired.

Fa la la fa la la fa la wow!

There was more, but we ended our drive-by light show here. 

When I was a little girl (and if you've heard this story before, just skip down a bit) we lived for a brief time in New Mexico, at first out in the country before moving to the town/city of Albuquerque (holy crap! I spelled it right the first time!). Out in the country, living in an adobe house, the sky was the light show. That Christmas, my Dad loaded the four of us in the car and took us on a drive. There, in the middle of nowhere, were luminarias, candles (real) in brown paper bags, going on forever. As an adult I guessed it was probably ranchers, lining their driveways - their very, very long driveways. At the time, in my young child mind, it seemed like the bright stars had settled on the ground as well as in the sky. It was magical and I've never lost my fondness for luminarias and the magic of starlight in a bag. 

Before tripping the land lights fantastic, the Culebra sky had put on a light show of its own. 

We've been having some incredible sunsets lately. 

This promised to be another.

The sunset the night before was glorious, but there was a cloud bank over the mountains, which pretty much was a promise of no green flash. 

The clarity as we were spinning out of the sun's light looked promising. 

A green flash to close out the year??

Would it happen? Was it happening?

Yes!! 

If you look closely at the left bit of the sun, you can see the start of green.

The flash happened a millisecond after, way too fast to click on (unless I'd been smart enough to have it on burst mode, and I was not), which is how these things go, sometimes a flash lasting a second or more, bright as a faraway firework and sometimes, a blink of an eye. 

And good night, Sol!

Land and sky, keeping to the light in the obvious analogy of a year with plenty of darkness, isn't a bad way to look ahead. Let's remind ourselves and each other in this new year. 

Have a 1st Friday full of the fanciful and fantastical. Do something fondly.