Thursday, December 8, 2011

Christmas Disaster Part 2: Christmas Lights


If you read my previous post you will know “natural” Christmas decorations don’t always work out to expectations.  So, perhaps a return to the old-faithful of Christmas decorations is in order. 

Christmas lights.  What is prettier than to see a beautiful tree all lit with colored lights.  We have a blue spruce in our front yard and have been stringing lights on it for most of the twenty plus years we have lived in this house.  The tree, about 12 feet when we first moved in, of course, has grown over that time.  Each year, for the last ten years, at least, my husband swears that THIS year, is absolutely the last year he will put lights on the tree.  

The spruce is now at least 30 feet tall.  We have a six-foot, half-broken, step-ladder and a re-purposed expandable golf ball retriever.  With these implements so clearly insufficient to reach the top of the spruce, I took my husband at his word and investigated what it would cost to call in the professionals.  $1,500!  To install and take down lights on a large tree.  And that was when I mistakenly told them the tree was about fifteen feet tall.  Did I mention I'm not so good with spatial dimensions?  Assuming they could work us into their schedule before Christmas?!?  How can there be a recession going on if the professional light-hangers are so busy at those prices?  I laughed out loud.  And figured we would finally have a dark tree this year.  A little sad but not the end of the world. 

So on a recent day I was surprised to see my husband dragging out the old broken step ladder and golf ball retriever.  I knew my place.  Holding the ladder, trying to juggle the wrapped strands, and praying my spouse did not fall down on his head or mine.

The lights went up and we applauded ourselves when we tested them before proceeding to get out the small artificial pre-lit trees for the front porch.  That night when we arrived home in the dark, the top three-fourths of the spruce was totally dark, as was the top of one of the little artificial trees on the porch.  Maybe lighted bottoms and dark tops are “in” this year?

Surely in this age of sleek iPhone’s and iPad’s, amazing electronic devices, and remotes for everything under the sun, there must be a better way to put up Christmas lights than to test your lights, string up the strands, plug them together and then hope for the best.  Only to find half or more don’t work because a bulb is loose, a fuse in a strand has blown (one of the strands on the spruce), or somehow a Grinch has just cast a spell on your Christmas lights (the small artificial tree—those lights somehow just came back on).

The pre-lit trees and decorations are no better; they are as temperamental as the old-fashioned strands.  But you can’t just take them off and put another strand on. 

The spruce finally is prettily lit with colored lights.  At least for the moment. The little artificial trees are firmly planted in the flower pots on the front porch.  And no one has had to be rushed to the emergency room for head injuries…yet.

But where is the clever ingenuity for Christmas decorations with lights that just somehow neatly work without all this struggling?  Wouldn’t we all be more in the Christmas spirit if we didn’t have to run back to Walgreens and get another strand or two of lights every week?

1 comment:

  1. This reminds me . . . it's time to get out National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation for its annual viewing!

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