Dad blows fuse over Christmas lights

Oh, the weather outside is frightful. And I'm outside, standing on a ladder and hanging Christmas lights on my gutter.

"Why didn't we do this when the weather was nice?" my wife, Joni, asked.

Naturally, I didn't have a good answer.

We never seem to get our Christmas decorations up until the weather turns frigid. If there's a chance for frostbite, it's time to put up the outside lights.

My 9-year-old daughter, Bailey -- bundled up in coat, scarf and gloves -- helped out by holding the ladder steady and handing me each strand of lights.

At one point, Bailey retreated inside to warm up. But she soon returned to help finish the task. Even she wondered why we had to freeze to death in the interest of Christmas cheer.

As she can attest, there was nothing cheery about standing out in the cold with a bunch of Christmas lights.

Amazingly, the icicle lights all worked. They were new lights, right out of the box. But still I figured I would have a strand or a partial strand that wouldn't light up.

By mid-afternoon, we were hard at work inside trying to put up our artificial Christmas tree.

This necessitated hauling out a gigantic box from the attic, full of fake branches and the stand to hold them.

Bailey and I fluffed up the branches. Soon we had the whole tree up.

Years ago, Joni and I used to go out and cut down a real tree. But now we just get the Christmas tree out of a box.

Getting the tree up was the easy part.

Next we started stringing the lights. Once again, Joni and I had purchased new lights. We figured it was better than trying to untangle all those old strands of lights in the attic.

Besides, these lights were advertised as being 70 percent brighter. Who wouldn't want brighter Christmas lights?

It said on each box that you could connect up to three stands together. But after two tries, we discovered that connecting three strands invariably led to blowing a fuse on the top strand of lights.

The power failure was annoying. I was beginning to feel like the Grinch.

Actually, Joni thought I had already blown a mental fuse of frustration over the whole decorating thing.

Joni loves the Christmas season. She sees decorating as fun. I view it as a task to be done.

What is it about Christmas lights? They always seem to malfunction.

I'm convinced that evil elves create Christmas lights.

Fortunately, we had purchased extra boxes of lights. We managed to deck our tree in four strands of lights that actually worked. It was a miracle.

Centuries ago, families didn't have to worry about malfunctioning lights. Of course, people outfitted their Christmas trees with burning candles.

This led to serious fires which, no doubt, put a damper on the holiday season.

With the lights up, we hauled box after box of ornaments to our living room.

We soon had the ornaments hanging from the tree. We would have hung more ornaments on the tree except for a shortage of hooks.

When it was all said and done, I didn't feel jolly. I felt relieved.

Most of all, I'm thankful that we don't depend on Christmas wiring to run our major appliances.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.