who knew?

Who knew that such simple ingredients as sand, candles and paper bags could make something so beautiful as a luminaria display? I'm amazed every time I see them at their simple beauty.

In honor of Albuquerque's tricentennial, they wanted to have the city show at least 3 million lights. They wanted it to be a Guinness record. They thought it would be. However, Guinness didn't know what a luminaria was, decided it couldn't count, oh yeah and there is no record for what Albuquerque wanted to do and they don't plan to create one.

Oh well. It's not the first great plan gone awry.

When I grew up in Southern California, part of the agreement to build the Music Center in Los Angeles was to give to the community. The way that they did this was they held a HUGE Christmas music concert on Christmas Eve. This was started some time in the mid 1960's, not long after they built the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The concert lasted about 12 hours, had community, church and school choirs participating from all over the county, and admission and parking were totally free.

We first started going because Mom was in a choir that sang there. After that, it became a tradition whether or not someone was involved. When I was in high school, we got to go sing there one year as well. When we couldn't make it, there was always radio or TV simulcast.

Since I've left home, I found out that they've reduced the concert to about 6 hours and they aren't nearly as inclusive in who they allow perform as they used to be. I was very bummed the last time I was home and tried to slip in for an hour or two. I got there way before 3 and had to be home by the time they were actually going to start because we had family coming over.

I guess this is proof that things WERE bigger when I was younger. However, simple things like the luminarias can be good too.