The Last Light on Holly Street
An original short Christmas story about an old string of lights, a quiet street and the small traditions that survive when everything else changes.
Every December, number seventeen was the last house on Holly Street to turn its lights off.
They were not impressive lights. Half the bulbs had been replaced over the years, so the colours no longer repeated properly, and the plastic star above the porch had gone cloudy with age. But at midnight on Christmas Eve, when the inflatable reindeer across the road had collapsed and the new LED curtains had clicked off on their timers, number seventeen still glowed.
This year the house was empty.
At eleven-forty, Mara from number nineteen noticed the dark porch while carrying rubbish outside. She stood there longer than she meant to. Mr Vale had moved into care in August. Everyone knew. Yet somehow she had expected the lights anyway.
Twenty minutes later she was on a ladder with her husband holding the bottom, their eldest passing up a box of ancient bulbs Mr Vale's daughter had left in the garage. Nobody said this was sensible.
At midnight the old lights came on. Two green bulbs failed immediately. The star flickered. Someone down the street opened a curtain.
By twelve-ten, three other houses had switched their lights back on.
Mr Vale never saw Holly Street that Christmas Eve. But the following morning Mara sent his daughter a photograph. In it the street was mostly dark, except for a row of little lights stretching from number seventeen all the way to the corner.
Under the photo she wrote: We kept it going.