Howard Beach, Queens, Christmas Lights

Howard Beach, Queens, the largely Italian American neighborhood, has been the locus of an unspoken Christmas lights competition for several decades. These small, well kept houses are festooned with hyperbolic displays, attracting viewers from around the New York metropolitan area. Legend has it the tradition began as lights, which purportedly had “fallen off trucks,” were exhibited as a sort of strange amalgamation of showy bravado and penance during Christmas: a season of ostentatious consumerism oddly mixed with that of distinctly solemn religious overtones. Howard Beach, in that sense, embodies this tenuous dichotomy that is the Christmas Season in America.

The practice has grown into a neighborhood institution – a sort of annual show of pride in homeownership, culture, and faith – as hundreds, and sometimes thousands of lights bray into the darkest weeks of the year.