Well, another Thanksgiving has come and gone, which means our household can now turn its attention to the upcoming Christmas season.  Unlike more and more of my friends and neighbors, in our castle we DO give Turkey Day its due and hold off on the fluff and floof of Christmas until at least the day AFTER Thanksgiving (which even I think is a little early, but am generally overruled by a gaggle of women who are in full-on “Holy Jolly” mode).

That means that by the time you read this, I will have made countless treks up and down the attic stairs, retrieving boxes upon boxes of Christmas decorations, lights, and other assorted holiday accessories.

We start with the tree.  We’re not “live” tree people, as although they do smell lovely in a warm room, they are a pain to water, they generally make a mess dropping needles for a month, and quite frankly, with my borderline OCD, I’d spend countless hours in a stranger’s field critiquing row after row of statuesque firs like I was judging dog breeds for the “Best in Show” at the Westminster Kennel Club – and who’s got time for that?

No, I pulled down our trusty pre-lit wonder that comes in three pieces, snapped them together, and plugged it in. 

Nothing.

One thousand lights and I can’t get a single one to even acknowledge that there is electricity running through the line.

Now, like any red-blooded male, I immediately thought to myself – “I can fix this”, and began where any male would begin – by checking the fuses in the end of one of the strings.  I slid open the case in the plug at the end of the first line and then attempted to pry out the attached fuse, hoping to switch it out with the adjoining replacement fuse (in the case next to it).  This required the dexterity of a heart surgeon.  After five minutes and a brow full of sweat, I unleashed a fury of curse words that would have made a longshoreman blush, railing against whoever designed that hateful fuse box, lights strung together in a series (so that when one goes out they all go out), and I even had some choice words for Thomas Edison and his $%#&*ing light bulbs.  For God’s sake, I just wanted to fix the lights, not take out the funny bone of that red-nosed doofus from the “Operation” board game.

I looked at the tree, still dark like my mood, and thought – there’s no way I’m going to sit here and attempt to change out individual lights on this thing until I find the offending one(s).  Do I really want to go into town on “Black Friday” and attempt to buy a new tree?  To quote Samuel L. Jackson in almost any movie –“oh, hell no.”

So, after ten minutes, I gave up and went to “Plan B”.  Over the years, I have acquired multiple boxes of decorations that I don’t use and for some strange reason – never seem to throw away, so I had a large crate of old white lights tangled together in a mass that I figured I could use to – you guessed it – restring lights that work over my pre-lit tree lights that didn’t.

So off I went, plunging my arm deep within the bosom of the tree to layer string after string of working lights over the entire exterior of the tree.  After about an hour of work, more cursing, and an arm that was scratched up and down like I’d been in a fight with a honey-badger, the tree was lit. 

There were now over 2,000 lights on the tree – half of which were glowing brightly in my living room.

Beautiful.

On a positive note, this year there were plenty of places to hang decorations from, as there must have been over four hundred yards of electrical wire twisted around those fake branches.

Go ahead and mock me – the damn thing is lit.

So off I went, now moving on to my next decorating project, the porch lights and small trees that frame my front door.  Another fight, this time with garland that wouldn’t lay flat and that kept pulling out the nails I had sunk into the masonry along the door to keep the decorations straight and secure (have you ever experienced the wind coming down from the mountain west of here?  Without the nails I’d be chasing Christmas balls and garland into Frederick County following the next cold front).

Then I pulled out the small Christmas trees for the door, each one also pre-lit and who have been dependable for the past five or six years.  I plugged the first one in – and it lit up only halfway.  I was now seething in anger, but since each tree only had about one hundred lights total, I silently changed out bulbs for another twenty minutes, hoping for a Christmas miracle.  More sweating – more cursing, and no miracle.  I calmy and carefully deposited the tree next to the trash can on my back patio, swallowing my rage.

That does it.  I’ll do this the American way.

I went out and bought two new pre-lit trees – shopping crowds be damned.

Happy holidays, everyone.