In the first week of October 2018, residents of the Sabal Palms subdivision in Youngsville, Louisiana, began putting up their Christmas lights. Most people were still thinking about Halloween. Christmas was nearly three months away.
It started with one neighbor's Facebook post. As the post was shared, the decorating spread past Sabal Palms into other neighborhoods in the area. On October 4, a local radio station reported on the early lights and asked listeners who were decorating to let it know. The next day, local TV station KATC ran its own story. By then, people who had never met the family were offering their support.
All of it was for one boy: Lane Begnaud, a 13-year-old eighth-grader who lived in Sabal Palms. Christmas was his favorite holiday, and his family had a tradition that went with it: going out together to look at the lights. That October, his neighbors decided the tradition could not wait until December.
