Christmas Tree Lights

I love this quote from Maya Angelou. I don’t travel enough to have lost any luggage, but I live in a rainforest and at tree-trimming time each year, I am reminded of the best opening line to a story I have yet to write:

“They found the body in dumpster, a string of Christmas tree lights wrapped tight around its neck.”

I’ve not determined whether the body is male or female, but there have been years when it’s been blonde and of Scottish/Finnish heritage. The time it takes to wire 400 twinkle lights in place is the perennial test of patience, Ter because she’s the one wiring them, me because I’m the one trailing behind her, doling out the string bulb by bulb, and intermittently declaring, “Hey, this one’s dead!” to which she traditionally replies, “How the h*** did that happen? They were fine when we tested them!”

In the Rockland days, she fussed more about getting the lights “just right” and I thought more about strangling her with them. I occasionally consider hanging myself with them when half the cursed bulbs burn out, but remember the 60s and 70s, when one dead bulb killed the entire string? I bet my mother does, as she’s the one who strung the lights before we kids put up the ornaments.

We bought a string of LEDs for the bears’ tree one year. Duly christened “the jellybean lights”, the wires were so thick and horrible to work with that they didn’t make it onto the tree at all. We remain fans of the old school fairy lights. In fact, we’re almost hoarding them for fear of losing the option in years to come, due to some silly government regulation about fire safety.

One of our oldest and dearest ornaments is Tigger in his Christmas sock. It’s an “ornamotion”, one of those fun decorations plugged into an empty bulb socket to make it move. Unfortunately, Tigger is so old that his plug is no longer compatible with the light sockets. Let’s face it, twinkle lights are not made to last forever, and the Noma strings we’ve preserved specifically for Tigger have all shorted out, never to be heard from again. Ever hopeful, we will always try the plug in a new string, but even present day Nomas no longer comply. So, for the past couple of years, Tigger has peered over the top of his sock, but not popped in and out of it.

Some traditions are forced into retirement.

This year, the lights were untangled on a rainy day—addressing two of Maya’s three checkboxes. We got a late start and at the time of this writing, the tree is still in pieces let alone strung with those rackinfrackin fairy lights, but somehow or other we’ll get ʼer done. No one will die and the end result will be fabulous as always.

That holiday murder mystery won’t be written this year … I don’t think …