without the festive lights which typically brighten private homes and Hamilton's streets. For those who opt to spend the holiday off the Island, the beautiful sight is often missed. However it need not be. According to the Associated Press , those planning to celebrate Christmas in the United States can bear witness to those which will be going on all over the country. Denver lays claim to being the first city to mount outdoor illuminations at Christmas. The tradition of lighting its neo-classical City & County Building with thousands of colored lights goes back for at least 70 years, and the show gets underway this year the first week in December. In what may be the world's largest outdoor Christmas light display, the building is lit with 40,000 floodlights. A 10-bell chime in the tower plays carols. Lighting of the 284-foot-high Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in downtown Indianapolis tomorrow starts the holiday season in the Indiana capital. The `Celebration of Lights' at Monument Circle begins with a prelude of choir music and carols, followed by the lighting of thousands of tiny sparkling bulbs on the monument, and capped with a fireworks display. Seven thousand twinkling lights will illuminate the Mayor's Christmas Tree, a 100-foot douglas fir, in Kansas City's Crown Center Square. Said to be the nation's tallest tree, its fate after the holidays is to be milled into lumber and recycled as commemorative Mayor's Christmas Tree ornaments (designed by Hallmark artists), sold to benefit a citywide charity. Since last Friday, San Francisco's waterfront has been glittering with more than 17,000 holiday lights in the Annual Holiday Lights Celebration at the Embarcadero Center. This year's event pays tribute to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, with the appearance of several Olympians from Northern California. Starting tomorrow, toys from pre-history to modern times will be displayed in New Orleans as part of its 10th `Celebration in the Oaks' festivities. Over 500 items from the visiting Toy Museum of Mechelen, Belgium, will be exhibited at City Park, traditionally lighted throughout the holiday season. The Celebration runs through January 5, while the toys will be on show through April 30. For information, contact (504) FYI-1515, menu 96. `Las Posadas', a re-enactment of the search of Joseph and Mary for shelter, is one of San Antonio's holiday events. Staged December 8 along the River Walk, decorated with holiday lights and luminarias, singers in the candlelight procession perform traditional Posada songs and Christmas carols. Another event on the same date in this multicultural Texas city is `Die Deutsche Weihnachtsfeier', a traditional candlelight Christmas service at Central Christian Church, conducted entirely in German. For information, call 1 (880) 447-3372. Pre-Christmas doings in Florida include the `Festival of Lights' in Lake City tomorrow, and the `Christmas Festival' at White Springs December 14. At Lake City , there will be a day-long Christmas bazaar ending with the lighting of Olustee Park in one of north Florida's most spectacular light displays. The White Springs event is at Stephen Foster State Folk Culture Center and features music, decorations, and lighting of the park. Even a ship has a tree. The `Queen Mary Tree Lighting Ceremony' December 11 aboard the historic ocean liner berthed in Long Beach, California is one of the city's major holiday events. There will be fresh flowers and plants throughout Blithewold Mansion in Bristol, Rhode Island for the historic building's `Wintergreen' holiday celebration, today through December 29. Old customs will US lights up too! as pictures and lampshades. Table sweets will include candied violets and other preserved flowers and fruits. Nightly candlelight tours of the Connor Prairie living history museum, 12 miles north of Indianapolis , recreates Christmas Eve, 1836. Ninety-minute tours, scheduled December 4-23, take visitors through eight 19th century buildings. For more information, call (317) 776-6000. Stately brick townhouses in historic Lancaster, Pennsylvania will be decked in fresh-cut greens, red velvet ribbons and lighted with candle luminaries for three Old-Fashioned Holiday Weekends -- December 6-8, 13-15 and 20-22. The celebration will include street vendors, barbershop singers, horse-drawn carriages and the Tuba Christmas Band. For more information, call 1 (880) PA-DUTCH. Christmas in three eras is now being celebrated at Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg, Virginia , until December 30. The plantation mansion will feature rooms devoted to the Victorian period (1893), the Edwardian period (1903) and the 1920s (1923) -- each depicting the celebration sytle of families who lived at the property in those years. For information, call (703) 777-3174. For a New England-style holiday fete, consider `Home for the Holidays' in Victorian Deerfield, in Deerfield, Massachusetts . Beginning today and running through January 20, the Frary House and Barnard Tavern in the historic village will be decorated as they might have been 150 years ago.

Tours of the village's 13 historic properties will be augmented with weekend holiday events. For information, call (413) 774-5581. A different wrinkle on the New England experience is Vermont's `Largest and Greatest Potluck Supper' on December 8 at the Equinox Hotel in Manchester . Proceeds from the event go to area food cupboards that serve 17 surrounding towns. For more information about events, call (802) 362-2100. PHOTO In years past, Frank and Dorothy Blaylock have dazzled passersby on Sandy Lane, Hamilton Parish with thousands of lights and even a manger scene