Originating as a simple idea on Facebook, Laramie Lights has become a new local holiday tradition with over 170 Laramie houses participating. Decorated houses have registered to be put on a map of the town, and Laramie folks can now use the map to track the best route of viewing festive, lighted houses. For more information on registering your house and receiving the map, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/LaramieLights2020

Jackie Grimes, the founder of the idea and the chair of the Laramie Lights committee, explains that the concept originated from one of her Facebook posts a few months ago. “Christmas is my favorite holiday, and with this year, watching how the [Covid-19 case] numbers got worse in October, I thought that this is really going to change the holiday season for a lot of folks.” After posting her idea, several of her friends on Facebook joined in and began piecing together the map of houses.

Grimes explains how driving around town and looking at lights with family is a tradition that can be continued in 2020, unlike many other holiday traditions that have been canceled. “One thing that can stay the same right now is jumping in your car with your family with hot chocolate and just driving around.”

The constantly growing list of decorated houses is currently at 170, and 58 of those houses have entered themselves into the Laramie Lights decoration competition. “We have five different categories, to make sure that we were inclusive,” Grimes says. “There are people who are really festive and maybe couldn’t afford a lot but still wanted to participate, we didn’t want them to be excluded from the get-go…One of our categories are for non-Christmas lighted houses, so we recognize that not everyone celebrates Christmas in the Christian sense, but that they still like the lights of the season.”

The deadline has past for the decorating competition as houses are already being judged, but Laramie homes can still opt to put their house on the map. “We are literally checking our registration forms and updating the map daily.” For the direct link to house registration, please visit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScoCxRTgBwlHCjY4inAMVf4AA5_XkorY1ypTEemukvsKga47Q/viewform?usp=send_form

To gain access to the maps of lighted houses, there are multiple options.

• For the full map of all houses, visit: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1BpTTBhdDpuimfaezqZufqXmQmglM1LZp&fbclid=IwAR1IE1D212snMuklxQe62ZGSjJ38Wem6bGRRJhqlYq-oXRKDpl6F8Xmt1fI&ll=41.283892900983%2C-105.62884295&z=12

• For the optimization route, visit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z7rjdfp0tp5t6xu/Optimized%20Laramie%20Lights%20Stops.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR3keYTcIes9S_Jr75Ym4oqKz7CcmeYo3l1VN0ujFBz96S6pb6DqwLODspw

• For the map of the 58 contest houses, visit: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?fbclid=IwAR1D2zxOVY1SVMrrzLhuVNZbXip8a_BVz9bwXNDFsD-Wrj13wFjJWBk1_F8&mid=19IWkA2AE7wZ1iuLkqp30fuOcvgqzTMcW&ll=41.293694137442046%2C-105.63004320000002&z=12

“We’re just really getting started, this year was kind of us figuring it out, but we’ve all agreed we would love to see this become an annual thing,” Grimes says. “It’s all about community participation, and we’ve just been floored by the level of community participation…By the week of Thanksgiving, Walmart’s outdoor decoration section was so picked over that people were not able to find lights!”

Grimes explains that she has gotten much feedback from longtime Laramie community members remarking on how they have never seen so many lights in Laramie at this time of year. Recently, it has been recognized that families are coming in from both Rawlins and Cheyenne just to drive the Laramie Lights map. “We’re setting the stage for an annual tradition that can be passed down for generations.”