Thursday, December 10, 2009

Things That Glow

Can we talk about Christmas lights? Because I'd really like to talk about Christmas lights. I have always wanted nothing but white Christmas lights. My parents always had multicolored. They were cute and fun and all when I was young. But as I grew up I wanted Classy and Magical. I wanted Timeless and Traditional. I wanted white lights.

I have never bought anything but. I love them. The way they resemble fallen stars on the branches. Or candlelight. They look natural and glowy and magical.

This year I pulled out my giant pile of white non-twinkling lights on green wire. I probably had about 10 of them or so. I've been toting them around from year to year, state to state. For some reason this year, just about all of them went on the fritz at once. A Christmas lights strike! Bastards!

Most of them just burned out half way. Half the strand works. The other is dark. I thought about checking the burnt out bulbs and trying to figure it out and replace it with those little extras in the plastic baggie that are attached to the cord. But I soon came to my senses. I probably paid $3 for each strand. They went in the trash (Gah! Sorry landfills!)

Off I went to pick up a few extra white light sets. Target! They have everything! Except basic white Christmas lights. Oh, they have all kinds of stuff. Pearlized. Crystallized. Spherical pearlized. Spherical multi-colored. Solar powered. White on WHITE wire. Multi-colored pearlized crystallized twinkling LED concoctions. But no plain white lights on green wire.

I brought home a few strands of the small spherical pearly ones. "These might be whimsical", I thought to myself. No. Not whimsical. Yellowish and not very glowy. Very yellowish.

Walgreens! They will have some plain white lights! Surely. No. They had white LED lights on green wire, though. Maybe those will work! Hey! Good for the environment! "These might be practical and look the same," I thought. No. Only if you want your tree to look like a flickering flourescent office cubicle. I think I got a migraine after looking at them for 0.002 seconds.

Walmart! They have EVERYTHING. Especially cheap basic stuff. Definitely, Walmart. No! Not a strand of white lights on green wire to be found. Unless you count the indoor only 20 lights on a strand mini-strands. I can just picture me now trying to string those around a 7 foot Christmas tree. "They have multicolored," I said to myself. "I grew up with those. They might give it a fun, childhood-ish glow," I figured.

So, we lit the tree with multi-colored. I felt a tear or two slide down my cheeks as I looked at the tree. "Where is the stars-on-the-branches glow?" I thought. Then, Becca came downstairs, gasped, and said, "PINK LIGHTS! HOW BEAUTIFUL!" I decided, maybe, just maybe, multi-colored lights might be okay.

13 comments:

Angie said...

Of course Becca liked them! I grew up with the large colored lights along with white lights, which I still like. This year we only have white lights.

Joy said...

Your kids are SO beautiful! Becca loves the colored lights - the white ones will emerge again! I LOVE your blog! You should write a book someday!

lisa said...

Im with you. I grew up with colored, love the white.

Smitty 1, 2 , 3 and 4 said...

Great post. Love how kids can make everything brighter!

joanna said...

Thank you Becca for giving me a smile today!

sgtsharp said...

I always wanted a tree with blinking lights but it gave everyone else a headache.

sgtsharp said...

Now Justine & I have done a tree with White lights stuffed inside the tree with colored lights on the outside.

Andrea and Ben said...

I had a feeling Becca would love it! We always had colored lights growing up and I have always put white lights on my tree. I have experimented with a strand or two of another solid color (red or blue) to accent my ornaments for the year, but always end up back at white. Something about them!

Anonymous said...

You can re-cycle Christmas light strings (at least in Minnesota). Snyder's drug stores are accepting them and are even offering a $5 off coupon if you bring in some. Even if they aren't doing it in your area, with the price of copper these days, the wire alone has to be worth something.
Love,
(Great)Aunt Linda

Meg said...

I always have a hard time finding them. I never think to buy them when I see them (halloween). I always have to throw at least half of ours away and we use...TONS. Hmmm, maybe they don't like the attic in 3 months straight of 100+ weather. I'm intrigued about the recycling idea.

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Jen said...

Ugh. LED lights. Totally cubicle-like.

So, just to make you feel better: we have colored lights on the top 80% of the tree. My last strand of colored lights died. The bottom 20% is white. Nice, huh? With the lack of ornaments on the bottom portion, the tree looks pretty freaky.