Christmas Memory 1: Light Bulb Hell

In the period of 3 days over Thanksgiving (not counting the holiday), my family (either one or two or all of us) made a trip to Target 8 times. Six of those times were Christmas light bulb related. Here’s why:

The day after Thanksgiving is when my mom makes my dad go up to the attic and drag down all of the Christmas decorations: lights, trees, nativities, Santas, snowflakes, advent calendars and all. Once my dad brings everything down, him and my brother(s) start putting up the outside lights, while my mom, sister, and I put up the Christmas trees and various other décor inside.

Well, when my dad and brother started putting up the outside lights, several lights were out on the icicle lights. So, my dad and brother ran to Target to get some more light bulbs, thinking that it’d be cheaper to just replace the light bulbs than buying all new icicle lights (because the kind of icicle lights we have aren’t made any more). Oh how wrong he was….

As my dad started replacing the light bulbs in the outside lights, my mom and I proceeded to put up our 9-ft Christmas tree, only to discover that the entire top part of the pre-lit tree was out. My mom and I figured it wasn’t that many at the top, so we could replace the bulbs. So, we started pulling them out and noticing that it never seemed to end. So we made another trip to Target to get more replacement lights (since we ran out of the bulbs that they came with).

But, Target, it seems, doesn’t sell just bulbs, so we had to buy strands of mini lights and take the bulbs out of those strands to then turn around and put them in the strand that was out. My mom replaced all of those bulbs on the top of the tree… guess what. Still didn’t work. So she just wrapped a separate strand around the tree and you couldn’t even tell. Then… the bottom of the tree went out. So we had to get another strand to wrap around the bottom.

Then my dad realized there were more lights that were out in the icicles, so he bought a light bulb checker and more strands of lights at Target. My dad, my brother, and I spent all night checking every freaking bulb in those icicle lights (5 or 6 strands… I can’t remember now; it’s all a blinding blur). After sustaining some injuries, we got all of them to work and we called it a night.

The next morning my dad finished up checking the bulbs, made sure they all worked, and then put them all up on the house. And then after putting them all up and plugging them all in, he discovered a short in the wire because every third strand of icicle lights was out. That’s when we decided to go back to Target to get all new icicle lights. Came home and put those up, and it would appear that everything was again right with the world.

Until my mom started putting up our 7-ft, family Christmas tree… The whole middle section of that tree was out. We knew by now that it would not be worth replacing the bulbs (because the bulbs on this tree were shaped differently and so we wouldn’t be able to just buy more). So, we had to go back to Target to buy more strands of lights.

I might be missing another trip to Target somewhere in there because we went so many times that I honestly can’t even remember the individual trips. It just seems like we were just there all day. We will more than likely be buying a new tree or two at the after-Christmas sales for next year. Let’s hope this light bulb hell won’t happen again.

Oh, and guess what… yesterday, a middle section of the 9-ft tree went out. Luckily we had an extra strand of lights from a previous trip to Target, so my mom wrapped that around the tree. If another part goes out, we’re celebrating Christmas in darkness, ghetto tree and all.