Anderson Finds Christmas in Shared Holiday Spirit
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
For the last few weeks, Anderson has fully committed to the bit. Main Street, already inclined toward a bit of sentiment on an ordinary Tuesday, disappeared under more than a hundred thousand Christmas lights, which now run all the way to Linley Park, as if the city were drawing a bright underline beneath itself. The bulbs are small, efficient, and reliably twinkling; the effect is not. People still stop in the crosswalks to take phone photos at the 58-foot Christmas tree on the square, angling for that one shot in which the courthouse, or near the Carolina Wren Park sign, and the overhead strands of light assemble themselves into proof that Anderson can, for at least a month, surpass the set of a Hallmark movie.
It is, officially, the season of its reasons. The Christian answer—Bethlehem, a manger, the birth of a savior—is the version read from the thin pages of Bibles on living-room sofas and, once a year, from the steps of the Anderson County Courthouse, where the county tree stands waiting to be lit. On the first Friday of December, a crowd materialized on the square: families in Clemson orange and Carolina garnet, office workers who did not quite make it home to change, and children already clumped around the base of the unlit branches, testing the boundaries of the ceremonial rope line. There they were greetings and a microphone that cuts out at least once; at seven, someone said a short prayer, and the countdown to when the switch is thrown. The tree glows; the crowd does the thing crowds do when light appears on cue: it murmurs and applauds, in more or less equal measure.
The calendar observes a sequence as sturdy as liturgy. Tree, then parade: the official lighting gives way, two days later, to the City of Anderson Christmas Parade, an afternoon procession that sends floats, marching bands, dance teams, Shriners, and fire engines down Main Street while spectators line the sidewalks in camping chairs. The chambers and tourism offices describe the parade in terms like “beloved tradition,” which undersell the intensity with which small children, armed with plastic grocery bags, pursue tossed candy along Main Street as though training for a post–holiday sugar economy. At the end of the route, when Santa finally appears, there is a brief collective recognition that this, too, is part of why the town bothers: not only to recall a sacred birth but to rehearse, once again, the choreography of shared delight.
The Salvation Army’s Red Kettles appearance reminds of those who are looking out for the ones who might not find much holiday season. They join other charitable organizations in asking for contributions and volunteers at a time when residents are most jolly and often most generous. It’s an important ritual as well as a lifesaver to make sure no one is completely forgotten.
There are newer rituals, as well, tethered less to Bethlehem than to refrigeration technology. “Ice in the Park,” the city’s real-ice skating rink at Carolina Wren Park, is now an annual prompt for Anderson to pretend that the Upstate is an outer borough of some snowier metropolis. In the evenings, under the lights, teenagers circle in slow, looping clusters, holding on to each other instead of the rail, while parents execute careful circuits that suggest the memory of balance, if not its present reality. On certain nights, a professional figure skater—this year, Olivia Pellerin—performs, the blades making neat punctuation marks in the ice while onlookers hold paper cups of hot chocolate from Petrichor Coffee and try not to think about emails.
Just beyond downtown, at Rose Valley Boulevard near the civic center, the theology of light is practiced at scale. Anderson Christmas Lights, a two-and-a-half-mile drive-through display across from the Civic Center, turns car windows into stained glass. For fifteen dollars, a vehicle can idle through illuminated arches, cartoon reindeer, synchronized trees, and a lit nativity, the whole route calibrated for maximum wonder at five miles per hour. Somewhere past the halfway point sits Santa’s Village, where the North Pole arrives courtesy of a parking lot, volunteers in elf hats, food, music, a bakery, hot chocolate and the unshakable belief that, with enough extension cords, transcendence might be achieved.
The question of why all this happens—why the county needs a tree, why downtown needs a rink, why Rose Valley needs synchronized reindeer—is answered, in part, by the older story about God showing up as a baby in a dark world. The rest of the answer is more local and less doctrinal. Anderson, like most places, spends much of the year in the practiced solitude of commutes, errands, and scrolling; December offers sanctioned excuses to stand close together and look up at the same thing. At the Tree Lighting, people drift from the courthouse steps toward a Cookie Crawl organized by the Chamber of Commerce, with shortbread and gingerbread, and talk about traffic and school calendars. At the parade, strangers comment on one another’s blankets; on the ice, they share the knowledge that falling is always a possibility and frequently funny.
None of this, strictly speaking, is necessary to remember Bethlehem. The early church did without LED net lights, drive-through displays, or a holiday window contest judged in partnership with the Anderson Arts Center. Yet, as November tips into December and the first strands of lights appear on downtown lampposts, the town seems to decide, almost sheepishly, that believing in a story is easier when it has street-level manifestations: trees, parades, rinks, and miles of blinking bulbs. Christmas in Anderson is, in the end, a local answer to an ancient impulse: to insist, publicly and repeatedly, that light belongs in the darkest stretch of the year, and that it is best appreciated in the company of other people squinting up at it, trying to name what, exactly, they are celebrating.
