Facing a familiar pandemic doom as the Omicron variant spreads, many are deciding the best choice is to push on with holiday rituals. Such a resilience was the attitude in the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn Tuesday (December 21), as visitors from near and far paid a visit to the famed Christmas house lights show.
The colors of the lights ran the full gamut of the rainbow. And the displays represented the full Christmas offering, including nativity scenes, reindeer, tinsel and more.
In coming to check out the fabled Christmas house lights and decorations, the visitors said they felt the experience was just what the doctor ordered.
“It was important for me to see the Christmas spirit,” said French tourist, Virginie Issautier. “And here is the best thing, in the best fashion to see it. And after all these months and years of disease, of COVID, it’s a new hope to see all these lights.”
The cheer however comes as New York begins to limit its traditional New Year’s celebration with the spread of the Omicron variant.
Many had hoped for a full party to mark a return from last year’s lockdown.
The Christmas lights of Dyker Heights, however, never fully dimmed even during the dark days of 2020, and the show – albeit reduced – did go on.
Those who arrived for a visit from more tropical confines for the 2021 lights said they had no problem with the lack of snow accompanying the Christmas displays.
The lights are said to have taken off in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
And in the intervening two decades, the mostly residential neighborhood has found itself as a pit stop for New York holiday tourism alongside the likes of Rockefeller Center and Times Square.
“It’s weird watching it explode to the popularity that it is now,” area native, Frank Wilders said. “Now that I am able to share it with my kids, especially my son, makes it even better,” he said, with his son, Ryan, next to him.
