From our loft, you can see across the garden to the woods and hills. It offers a tree-top view of what the birds are getting up to, and I could stare for ages. But at night it is like peering into a bottle of ink. Dense rich blackness stretches in every direction. To the north, no house stands between us and the nearest town, a few miles away.

I remember being surprised to read the shepherd Heida Asgeirsdottir’s account of her life in the most remote corner of Iceland, where she tends a flock of 500.

She was unfazed by eruptions from the volcano 15 miles away, which could cloak the area in an ash cloud so thick she could not see her hands before her eyes. Nor did she baulk at challenging an international energy company’s plans for developing in this environmentally fragile landscape. What did discomfit her was the dark. At night, she would stand on her doorstep and take solace in the lights of the nearest farm, a long way off.

Spike Milligan understood the problem. In his poem Bump, which I learned as a child, he summed up the dread that night-time can bring: “Things that go ‘bump’ in the night/Should not really give one a fright./ It’s the hole in each ear/That lets in the fear,/ That, and the absence of light!”

Hoolet is lit by gentle street lighting which, when it snows, reminds me of Narnia. Now that it is getting dark before five o’clock, the place can feel as if it has closed in upon itself even before the working day has ended. With far less traffic than before, the only signs of activity are the winking of a dog’s neon collar, or the head torches of runners, bobbing like fireflies along the fields and stream.

So it was a lovely surprise the other night when I went to close the shutters to see a row of brilliant coloured lights brightening the path by a house further up the street. Scarlet, plum, green, white, yellow and blue, they lit the way like an invitation to a party.

The following evening the house opposite theirs was parading coloured lights too, and the day after, another house had framed a window in rainbow lights. It felt as if they were in conversation.

As a child I could never understand those households that didn’t put up their trees or decorations until Christmas Eve, when it was almost too late. On the way to school I’d note the first lights beginning to appear in mid-November, the tally mounting with each day. Yet to those imagining that a few Hooleteers are jumping the festive gun, this somewhat unseasonal display of lights has nothing to do with Christmas, as I learned.

It is part of a winter-time initiative, inspired by an East Lothian grandmother, Alison Johnston, who came up with the notion of Shine Bright Scotland, to combat Covid gloom. Perturbed at the bleakness of the coming months, she suggested people put a light in their window from the start of November, to hearten children as the nights closed in and help banish the pall that threatens to engulf us all. Here in Hoolet, the plan is to keep them shining through January.

After a quick masterclass in garden illumination by the neighbours who first led the way – who knew you could close a window on the thin end of the cable, without cutting off the electricity? – I headed out to the shops. The shelves of outdoor decorations are a whole other world, and it was difficult not to get sidetracked by the grazing family of sparkly deer that could be ours, if only I could blindfold Alan for the next couple of months.

By the end of the afternoon, as dusk descended, I had festooned the cotoneaster bush beneath our kitchen window with a string of 200 bulbs, and switched on the power. It took a few minutes to find the right setting. What we needed was a steady glow rather than the flashing, rippling, or surge and fade effects which might make friends across the green hallucinate.

It brightens up the garden no end, and that night I took a walk around the village, to see how far the notion had spread. One or two houses had decorations in their windows or hanging from the roof, but not many. Since then, however, there has been a new addition almost every night.

Already the village green looks much more welcoming, with indoor displays of silver and golden swags, chandeliers and coronas, and trees and hedges twinkling as if Tinkerbell had just dusted them with her wand.

We may not be allowed to enter other people’s houses at the moment but like lighthouse keepers of old we can signal from a distance.

A casual inspection of other places in the area suggests that the ripple-effect from headquarters in East Lothian has been slow to spread. Even so, there were hopeful glimmers wherever we went. At the entrance to one village, a massive conifer greeted us with crystal lights. The owners either have a cherry-picker, or are trained in the art of throwing a lasso. Along the way, a handful of houses shone out, like ships at sea, pinpricks of good cheer, pushing back the dark.

In this most dismal and isolating of years, there has never been more need to offer reasons to be cheerful. Yet in Nordic countries, regardless of religious custom, lanterns, candles and electric lights have long been used to ward off winter’s clutches.

It’s a habit that might prove to be catching, even once coronavirus has fled.

Nothing that any of us does, of course, can match the house in Hoolet which, come Christmas, is more brightly lit than an oil rig. On the edge of the village, its magnificent display is the best antidote to the seasonal blues anyone could prescribe.

With eaves, windows and walls bedecked in luminous decorations, the house becomes a beacon, a village-wide festive greeting.

The man who pins the lights in place is the roofer who does our repairs. With his extra-long ladders, he spends a day every December crawling over the slates and chimney breasts, just like a Santa Claus come early.