About
A lighting company that already owned the ladders.
Lights For Love is a giving program run by Sasquatch Lighting. We install Christmas lights, at no cost, for people in Knoxville and East Tennessee who are having a hard year.
Where it came from
Sasquatch Lighting hangs Christmas lights for a living. That means trucks, ladders, commercial-grade product, clips for every kind of roofline, timers, and crews who can do a house before lunch and make it look like it was always there.
Once a year, all of that sits pointed at the customers who can pay for it. Which is fine — it is a business, and the business is what makes any of this possible. But it also means the ability to make a house look like Christmas is already sitting in a trailer, and turning it toward somebody having the worst December of their life costs a day.
Once you have noticed that, it becomes fairly hard to justify not doing it. That is the entire origin story. There is no dramatic version.
Who this is for
The short answer is people going through something, and the organizations that catch them. In practice that has meant group homes and transitional housing, families in the middle of a medical fight, households that lost someone this year, and neighbors that somebody else quietly nominated without telling them.
Our anchor project every season is Isaiah 117 House, which provides temporary housing for children entering foster care. They run a home in each county they serve, and we light all six of theirs — across Blount, Knox, Sevier, Cocke, Hamblen and Jefferson counties. A child arriving there is having the worst day of their life and is walking into an unfamiliar building. Whether that building looks like an intake office or looks like a home is a real difference, and it is one we can actually make.
What we believe about it
Nobody has to prove they deserve it
We do not ask for income documents, letters, or a written account of your worst year. If you are asking, that is enough information for us to take the request seriously.
It is free, and free means free
No install fee, no product cost, no deposit, no "just cover materials." Nobody is ever invoiced for a Lights For Love install, and we take the lights down in January at no cost too.
We say no out loud
There are more requests than there are December weekends. When we cannot take a project we tell you, early enough that you can plan around it, instead of going quiet.
Your situation is not marketing material
We never publish a name, a photo, or a story without asking first, and no is a complete answer. Plenty of our installs have never appeared anywhere and never will.
What Lights For Love is not
We would rather be plain about this than let anyone find out later.
How it gets bigger
One company can only reach so far in one December. Two ways the program grows, and neither involves us collecting money from the public:
- More installers. Other lighting companies and experienced installers donating a day and their own gear.Add your crew →
- Businesses covering a home. A local business funds the product and labor for one household directly.How sponsorship works →
Both are how the calendar fills up. Neither is a donation to us.
Somebody you know is having a hard year.
You can put their name in without telling them. It takes about two minutes.