Get your Christmas lights out of the closet, the attic, basement or garage.  If you don’t have any, go buy some. Beginning next week, the entire Boothbay peninsula will be gearing up for a very special celebration, the Festival of Lights, geared to tie in with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens’ holiday spectacular, Gardens Aglow. New last year, the light show attracted over 36,000 people — imagine it, in December when folks assume this popular summer tourist town goes into its sleepy mode for the winter. Most of us were in disbelief when the numbers came out, and we realized that we were missing the boat. We weren’t prepared to welcome visitors, at least not many of them, that time of the year. A lot of our businesses that were capable of opening that time of year were closed, and there were few welcoming Christmas lights on either commercial or private properties.

We’ve now had time to regroup, and don’t want to miss such a golden opportunity again. That’s why many area businesses plan to cater to the visitors, possibly as many as 50,000 this year, since word is getting around that Boothbay’s lighting spectacular is just that. A total of 180,000 ED lights lit up the sky last year and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens will be displaying 360,000 when the holiday shows opens this month.

So where does the average homeowner or small business come in?We can hang or string Christmas lights and decorations on our property. Our peninsula used to go all out to light up for the holidays, but in recent years, we’ve really slacked off, losing some of our Christmas spirit. Now’s our chance to recapture that spirit.

In the past few days, we’ve seen a number of homes and businesses “getting ready’’ to decorate, and we expect that more and more will join their ranks in the coming days. Christmas lights welcoming both visitors and residents alike as they head down our peninsula and travel along the scores of side roads will truly help us usher in this very special time of the year and encourage us all to participate in the many celebrations already unique to our coastal town during the holidays. Catch the spirit.