Who could have imagined that, twice in the same month, I’d be writing about Christmas tree lights? In my December 6 column, I wrote that I was using two brand-new strands of lights this year to avoid the frustration of too many burned-out bulbs.
Let’s just say frustration showed up anyway. I’d bought the new lights after Christmas last year because they were ridiculously cheap. This year, on the day after Thanksgiving, I retrieved them–tightly wound and packed in their never-opened boxes–from a basement shelf. I plugged in the first strand to test them before stringing them on the tree. All 75 tiny bulbs glowed a warm white. Hooray! I plugged in the second strand. Again, 75 tiny bulbs glowed a warm white. Double hooray!
As detailed in my previous column, with some difficulty I managed to wrap the lights artfully around the tree. I hung the ornaments and put the angel on top. Then I inserted the plug into the outlet. The tree looked so perfect that I was practically giddy. For almost six weeks, from November 28 until Epiphany, I was going to bask in the enchanting holiday glow of this wonderful little tree.
On December 1, half the lights in the top strand quit working.
The tree looked sad from inside the room. It looked even sadder from the front yard. Something had to be done. I went to YouTube for answers. I learned that the trouble was likely a fuse. My instructor demonstrated how to slide a little door on the plug open and take a look inside. “It should be obvious if a fuse is burned out,” he said. It sure wasn’t obvious to me, so I decided to pop both fuses out—this wasn’t as easy as it sounds–and examine them under a bright light. They looked fine, so with great difficulty I popped them back into place, slid the door closed and plugged the lights in. The darkened bulbs still wouldn’t light.
I returned to the basement. In a shoe box filled with mangled red and green bows, I found a little bag of new fuses I’d bought sometime in the distant past for just such a disaster. Those fuses, once maneuvered into place, changed nothing. The lights were still out.
Back I went to You Tube, where I found a new instructor. He suggested popping each faulty bulb out of its socket, checking the fragile filament on the bottom of it with a special tool designed to do just thar, and then—if it appeared to be “live”–popping it back into its socket. I should do this with every light that wasn’t working.
Yeah, but I didn’t have such a tool. So I tried just popping the dead lights out and sticking them back in. Still dark, all of them. With Christmas more than three weeks away, this was not okay. I tromped back down to the basement and finally found a wadded-up strand of lights. I tested them. Every one lit up. It was practically a Christmas miracle. I removed all the ornaments and the dead strand of lights from the tree and started over.
Then I inserted the plug. It turns out the newly discovered strand was cool white LED lights. The old strand was warm white incandescent lights. The tree looked silly. Ridiculous, actually. But it would have to do.
As I prepare to send this column to my editor, Christmas is two days away. My tree is only half-lit because the warm white incandescent lights have now quit working entirely. I’m not making this up. I have neither the energy nor the enthusiasm to care. By the time you read this sad, sad tale, Christmas will be in the rearview mirror. And my dear little tree will be standing, bare and forlorn, in a dark corner of the basement.
Where it just may live forever.
(December 27, 2025)