Christmas Tree Lights
Monday, September 3rd, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
Price: $24.99 USD
Marking the Beginning of Christmas
Christmas tree lights create the mood of Christmas faster than any other Christmas decoration. The moment they are turned on is the moment Christmas begins. The warm glow from a hundred tiny lights sets the walls dancing with flickering light and colour. The twinkle of white lights is equally magical, setting the room atremble with shade and shimmer. The very moment those lights are turned on releases a stream of good memories from pervious Christmases, setting a positive tone for the Christmas just beginning.
Christmas Lights of every Hue, Shape and Tune?
Every year I find myself sitting by the tree with a glass of hot coffee or single malt basking in the glory of the Xmas tree lights. Our family owns several different sets of holiday decoration lights. Some twinkle, some stay on constantly, some fade up and down, some are coloured and some are white, and one set – and one set only – played jingle bells over and over again until some mystery person split his coffee (or was it a single malt?) over a couple of bulbs and blew the circuit.
Outside, Enjoying the Inside
Every year we put up different combinations of Christmas tree lights, some draped over the branches of the tree, others creeping around window sills and door frames. They all have their function. On the evening of the first snowfall, I kill the regular house lights, throw the curtains open and trudge around the garden in the fresh snow. Christmas can be found in the way the light sparkles and plays across the snow.
The First Snowfall
Some years I have had to wait until well after Christmas for the first snowfall, but it has always been worth the wait, and the Christmas lights stay up until I’ve had my light show in the snow. Every year I take a few long rides to see other decorated homes, but it’s the lights that I’m going to see, especially if there’s snow. I guess like all big children, I can’t resist bright, shiny things.
Price: $11.87 USD
A Neat Trick for Storing Christmas Lights
The obvious downside to having so many different strings of Christmas tree lights is how to store them. Every year you are sure to find your holiday string light sets all tangled up in an hopeless spaghetti of wires, bulbs and plugs. Over the years I’ve devised a way of rolling them to prevent this. I take the tube from a used-up roll of wrapping paper and wind the lights around it. I then used scotch tape to secure the ends to the roll. I have not had any problems with tangled Christmas tree lights since I started doing this, but the children don’t get to make so many robots out of cardboard.
The Not so Magical Moment
The other annoyance is that one well-hidden bulb that burns out just as you’re settling down, glass in hand. Worse still is the moment you throw the switch for the first time with all the family gazing in anticipation at your Xmas tree lights, waiting for the magical, illuminating moment, and nothing happens. Thus begins the exhausting task of finding that one bulb that is shutting down the entire set of lights. This problem wasn’t even alleviated by buying a Christmas tree light tester.
A Testing Time at Christmas
It didn’t take long to find out that it took just as long to check each bulb with the tester than with a regular bulb, although you can always be sure that the tester will work. We use our tester after the several hours we wasted testing our holiday lights one Christmas Eve with a burnt out bulb. Once the Christmas tree lights are ablaze, any inconvenience is quickly forgotten and Christmas is officially declared open in our home to the sounds of clinking glasses.
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Eoin Beckett is a freelance author and editor. Although he stems from Ireland, he currently lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Read more about Christmas Lights for the Home at Juletide - the ancient and magical word for Christmas.
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