Yup, it’s that time of year again for crawling around in the attic and basement, trying to find all those boxes of holiday “magic.” Last weekend I decided to get my holiday cheer on and I unpacked all of the lights and decorations to trim the tree. After the holidays last year, we had packed everything neatly away for easy access and decorating the next time around - each ornament wrapped in tissue, the strings of garland packed in their own individual bags, and each set of lights were tested, wrapped, and carefully placed in their own storage container.
So why, when I unpacked the lights this year, did more than half of the light sets, several of which were new last year, have many burned out bulbs and/or only partially worked or were completely dead? It was an extremely annoying discovery but at least I tested them BEFORE putting them on the tree - a hard lesson learned from past experience (my definition of holiday madness: to have a fully decorated tree that took hours to finish only to find out there are entire sections of lights that aren’t working!)
Instead of giving in and driving to the store to purchase new lights, I wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery. I'm someone who just likes to know why things happen and how to fix them - plus I’m not keen on contributing to our “throw away” society. I thought I’d share my findings with those of you who have also had this problem or those who find themselves trimming the tree at midnight and have no other options except DIY.
So off to the Internet I went in search of answers. I was able to find these websites that gave me some great insights:
Holiday Decorating: Half the lights in a string are out
How to Troubleshoot Christmas lights: Half of the string is out
Storing Christmas Lights
After reading the advice, I spent a couple of hours checking every single bulb on each light set, fixing or replacing bulbs, CAREFULLY removing, reusing & storing for future use the old light bulbs from sets that were not useable. I was eventually able to piece together about 3 sets out of 8 that were broken. I'm not sure all that work was worth it for $2.99 light sets - but I just had to try. And after all of that, I read on the Storing Christmas Lights webpage: "Christmas lights generally are only meant to be used for no more than 90 days. Chances are if your lights are more than three seasons old, they may need to be replaced next year anyway." So you’ll have to decide for yourself if all the extra work is worth the effort but hopefully you’ll gain 1 or 2 more seasonal uses from them and therefore delay their trip to the landfill.
Regardless, I felt empowered by taking on those pesky lights, showing them who was boss, and, eventually, creating a little holiday magic :)
Here is the tree with the lights finally completed – I love lots of lights on a tree and feel it’s the most important part of the decorating process. This tree we “rescued” from a tree farm where it was marked as “trash,” destined to be cut up into pieces for wreaths. After looking at every tree on the farm (my annual obsession), I decided that I wanted this tree to fulfill its Christmas tree destiny. I love trees that aren’t perfect – i.e. a crooked trunk, double top, large spaces between branches and my favorite thing but the hardest to find: one that’s untrimmed and natural. I don’t enjoy having the stereotypical “perfect tree” since most people just assume it’s artificial anyway but more importantly, I think there’s beauty in so-called imperfection.
Finally the “bling” was added. I use as many glass balls/ornaments as possible because I love the way they bounce the light around. I try to collect at least one ornament every year that represents something memorable from that year. I also date them and try to write a little history somewhere on the ornament. It becomes a walk down memory lane every year when decorating. I’m also not into “themed trees” because I love the eclectic uniqueness of telling my own story through my ornaments. However, it does take me HOURS to organize & decorate the tree – by color, ornament size, placement & the spacing done to my liking. But regardless of your holiday decorating style, in the end, if it makes you happy, then that’s real holiday magic.
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