The Olde Town Avondale Estates Christmas Tour

Lyrics

[Intro]
Leave the car at the MARTA station, the program said.
Let the headlights die.
Walk in.
The cold air hits your face, first week of December.
Smells like pine and the coming frost.

[Verse 1]
Down Berkeley Road, the houses are holding their breath.
Half-timbered gables sharp against an indigo sky.
George Willis must have imagined this.
A single electric candle, steady and gold, in every lead-paned window.
No blinking lights here.
Just the quiet grace of pine garlands tied with wire to the eaves.
A reverence for the blueprint.

[Chorus]
This is the town's self-portrait, hung once a year.
The 1924 dream, lit from within.
This is the promise kept in candlelight.
The Olde Town Avondale Estates Christmas Tour.
We walk the quiet streets and read the story in the windows.

[Verse 2]
We hear them before we see them.
The voices of the carolers, echoing between the slate roofs.
Their battery lanterns make small, swimming halos in the dark.
We turn the corner toward AvonHouse.
And there it is, the smell of woodsmoke from a chimney, and something sweet.
Warm apple cider in a paper cup.
It warms your hands first, then your throat.

[Chorus]
This is the town's self-portrait, hung once a year.
The 1924 dream, lit from within.
This is the promise kept in candlelight.
The Olde Town Avondale Estates Christmas Tour.
We walk the quiet streets and read the story in the windows.

[Bridge]
We peer through a bay window on Clarendon.
The perfect tree, the sleeping dog on the rug.
We are ghosts at their feast of light.
I think of the old Garden Club ledgers.
The women listed as 'Mrs. Husband's Name'.
Their hands planted the seeds of this canopy.
Their ghosts are walking with us tonight, I think.
Approving of the garlands.

[Outro]
The last house on the tour.
The carolers' voices fade down Lakeshore Drive.
We walk back to the station.
The Tudor peaks become silhouettes again.
The candles go out, one by one, behind us.
Just the cold, clean air.
And the quiet story, put away for another year.