Holiday lights are getting brighter—and messing with our sleep

It was just after 7 p.m. on December 6, long after darkness had settled over north Seattle. But on Candy Cane Lane everything was quite merry and bright. The University of Washington marching band filled the street with “Feliz Navidad,” the brass instruments coiled with golden strings of light. Dogs with LED collars wove between stroller wheels. A towering inflatable Grinch nodded in the breeze beside a brick home traced by a single strand of multicolored lights.

For more than 70 years, residents of Northeast Park Road have illuminated the darkest weeks of winter with intention, but not with the same Clark Griswold-level exuberance that you see elsewhere in the city and around the U.S. They lean into original décor, including a historic wooden carousel and a fleet of six-foot-tall stovepi