The History

• The Martha's Vineyard Historical Society and the Martha's Vineyard Camps Meeting Association have responded to numerous inquiries that the song has no historical or present day relevance to their event.
• No MV locals have acknowledged any connection with the song's lyrics.
• Novelist Alice Hoffman has confirmed that the song has nothing to do with her 1987 novel, Illumination Night.

The Tone

• The Light the Lanterns story suggests (i) to "celebrate the homecoming ... celebrate the shipwrecked sailors", and (ii) a lament for the passing of that tradition -- "all I could see were the lights extinguishing".
• The Martha's Vineyard event is a summer holiday religious celebration, started in 1869 that attracts hundreds of devotees and thousands of tourists.  The decorated cottages of Oak Bluffs do not represent the mood of a celebration for shipwrecked sailors.

The Lanterns

• The Wesleyan Grove ceremony involves the ceremonial lighting of the first candle in the Tabernacle -- an ancient Judeo-Christian custom -- after which the participants in Oak Bluffs neighbourhood turn on their pre-strung electric lights simultaneously. It is a coordinated, mass illumination -- an easy flick-of-the-switch for thousands of highly flammable Japanese and Chinese paper or silk lanterns. Nowadays electric light strings make up the vast majority with just a few traditionalists still using tea lights and pillar candles. 
• The illumination night mentioned in the mystery song was about actually "lighting the lanterns", not switching them on! And lighting a few candles would not be of any difficulty to our singer. The song lyrics "to see if I can light the lights" implies a personal struggle with tricky light sources for the singer. If the Mystery Song refers to kerosene lamps, they are not always easy to light. Whatever lights she is talking about, she clearly draws the distinction between her own competence and that which the older, "crazy ladies" on some mysterious magic island would have had no trouble with. 

The Gingerbread Houses

• One understanding of "gingerbread houses" means the edible ginger biscuits confectionery. Another meaning, drawn from any popular internet search including the word 'lanterns', is sure to bring up the imitative, hyper-decorated, multi-colored holiday cottages of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard.
• But in reality, millions of mainland Americans reside in what they affectionately call "gingerbread houses" -- the Carpenter Gothic architectural style of late 18th Century. Steeply pitched cross-gables, board-and-batten siding, with pointed-arch windows were adopted for function, elegance, and structural economy. A classic example of these is along the California coast where numerous lighthouse keepers' quarters were constructed in this exact style to withstand harsh coastal weather where shipwrecks might occur. 

The Dying Lights

• The Martha's Vineyard Illumination Night event was originally a commercial venture in 1869 to promote the Methodist ideals and popularise their community's holiday cottages. Today it attracts thousands of tourists.
• ​But the illumination night mentioned in Light the Lanterns is clearly a more private event, possibly just a family affair. 
• Its tragic thread is that this celebratory tradition, the allegorical light of remembrance was dying out --"All I saw were the lights extinguishing". The women mentioned in the Chinese restaurant clearly felt their small, barely patronized memorial gathering needed "to pass on the legacy".
• How could anyone travel to the MV Illumination night and come away thinking: "Yeah, this popular 150-year-old celebration needs saving"? And why would it be a drunken Grace or "She" who had the authority "to pass on the legacy" of the Martha's Vineyard Grand Illumination Night to some hippie troubadour one night in a Chinese restaurant? That would be the job of the MVCMA Committee. It just makes no sense.

Geographical Dislocation

• It is elementary to deduce that the singer/band were most likely from the West Coast music scene and canvassing for a recording deal in LA. It makes no sense that some unheard of West Coast artist would write about some East Coast Christian gathering (4,000 kms away), record such a song, and then promote it in LA where it would have no cultural relevance.
• The singer tells "She took me to illumination night." Did "She" take the LA muso to MV for a look at a bunch of electrified candy-houses with thousands of other local tourists, then the singer plans "I'm going back on illumination night to see if I can light the lights".  Why on earth would she make music on the West Coast and then travel 4,000 kms for a one-night, supposedly-dying event, which she had only been to on her first year?
• Or was it an East Coast muso who then dropped their demo off in an LA talent office? It just makes no sense.

​Climatic Misalignment

• ​The MV Grand Illumination Night is held on the 3rd Wednesday in August (a dry summer month). But the lyrics "pray that the rain won't come" suggest an anxiety about weather conditions. Besides, the Grand Illumination Night has a back-up day/night just in case. Any rain is not going to inhibit the switching-on of the lights at Oak Bluffs.
• If the Mystery Song refers to kerosene lanterns, they are not always easy to light in the wind or rain. Hence the lyrics "pray that the rain won't come" is a premonition that the whole occasion might be snuffed out if she fails to "light the lights".

The Term "Homecoming"

Homecoming can mean:

• An annual tradition where alumni return to their alma mater, for a parade, the crowning of a Homecoming King/Queen, and a formal dance.
• Or a military repatriation, returning veterans.
• The LTL lyrics "celebrate the homecoming" of the "shipwrecked sailors" is clearly the latter meaning here.
• Clearly Martha's Vineyard has no relevance to either homecoming.

​

Illumination Night

• The term illumination night has been used over millennia in innumerable memorial and celebratory settings. This is the fundamental flaw made by all those who have attached to the MV event. They Googled the term and, as Google often does, it tossed up the most popular return in their own culture and time.
• We are clearly talking about two different illumination nights here. Whereas the MV event is capitalized as a very special event -- The Grand Illumination Night -- in the mystery song it could have been the singer's own poetic nickname for what she had previously witnessed on her first invitation by the unnamed "She".
• If the term illumination night doesn't come up in a Google search other than at Martha's Vineyard, that doesn't mean there wasn't any other one. It may just mean it was too small and under the radar, a less formal thing amongst those who knew of it, as befitting 3 people discussing its impending demise in a Chinese restaurant where the ritual's matriarch got drunk.

The Full Research Exposition on these summary points is on Page 4, Section 3.