There’s something philosophical about taking down Christmas lights. You spend weeks building the sparkle, only to carefully dismantle it all, knowing you’ll do it again next year. It’s a quiet lesson in impermanence—that joy is not meant to stay static, but to visit, dance, and then leave room for the next thing.
So when you see the last of the London lights fade on that January evening—whether from your window or from a bus passing Trafalgar Square—let it be a gentle nudge: the magic doesn’t live in the bulbs. It lives in the moments between. You can take the lights down, but the glow you felt? That’s something you carry with you, all the way through the grey months until the first daffodils poke through the February mud.
And isn’t that the best kind of light to keep?
