I have to start decorating for Christmas early.  It is not happening at all this year, due to an unscheduled trip to south Florida to spend quality time with my ninety-one year old father-in-law.  We drove.  I have advise to give to you.  Don’t drive from the far north to the deep south in the U.S…I actually saw the full rusted undercarriage of a double bottomed semi as it made a quick lane switch on I-75. Someone pointed a gun at me in Georgia, passing in the fast lane. My husband told me that I imagined it all.  Our windshield has a spreading S shaped crack in it now.  But, most years things went differently.

My basement has coiled tangles of wire and little bulbs we call “the lights.”  It does not matter whether the strings are new, or as old as Methuselah, the outcome is the same.  I try to untangle the strings of a billion lights, threading plugs through wormholes of wire that could take me to Mars.  The lights get knotted, tangled, tied, and coiled tighter.

I don’t want a Mercedes.  I don’t want a floor length mink, or a diamond necklace.  I want a functioning string of lights that don’t fight me as though it were a World War each year.

Sometimes my daughter is around with her small nimble fingers and hawk eyes vision.  She can untangle a necklace that has been networked into six earrings and an ugly Christmas tree pin.  She intervenes only because she senses a menopausal storm on the near horizon.  She untangles the lights while I watch and give encouragement.

The time comes to plug them in.  All go on, for an instant.  Inexplicably, half of each string fails to function.  I drink two gin and tonics and wax philosophically:  “Well, we can look at these ways; the strings are half lit or half unlit. Or they don’t light up at all.”  We wiggle the bulbs and shake the strings as if there were an electrical genie to fix shaken lights.  No, all the lights wink out.  I am determined not to spend one dime on new lights.  I use all the untangled and half lit and half unlit lights on the tree.  I plug it in.  Some of the lights work some of the time, some lights work part of the time, and some never work.  Every night our tree has a different display depending upon the mood of the family and upon on how much gin I put in a glass of tonic.  It could be barometric pressure, too.

Sometimes, there is enough light to rival Vegas and Times Square.  Other nights there is darkness.  On those nights I light a pine scented candle from the drugstore in the room with the tree. I am happy with this one little light to celebrate the season.  It works!  Wax, a wick, a match, voila:  festivity.