…being so stingy with the Christmas lights. With only a few business improvement areas glitzing up their neighbourhoods with lights for the Christmas festivities, us Torontonians take delight in going downtown to check out our city hall’s lightscape. Yet what do we find Chrismas night, as car after car squeezes into a spot on Queen Street and people tumble out, cameras in hand or skates over their shoulders, all heading towards the ice rink to see its light glory? Nada.

The trees on the perimeter are lit up in blue and white. The blue-lit Christmas tree with its star on top, stands hiding behind a hulking black scaffold, but all else sits dark and silent inside the raised walk boundary.

The darkness swallows up the point ‘n shoot camera flashes and renders ghostly the skaters as they glide over the puddles, the scrape of their blades on the hard ice the only evidence that they’re there.

The politicians have declared Nathan Phillips Square a lights-free zone at night, even on Christmas, when people finally have time to relax to skate to photograph the Festival of Lights that they’ve been hearing so much about on the news. They want to end their long, happy day at the centre of our city, drinking in the beauty we all paid for. And what do we get?

Scrooge.

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