First, a sincere thanks to the friends, neighbors, and homeowners’-association representatives who have reached out during the past four months. We’ve heard from so many of you—a couple of times via a note tied to a rock thrown through our window—as we’ve navigated this journey. Because of all the feelings people have expressed along the way, I wanted to give everyone a quick update on our family: we have taken our Christmas lights down.
It was not an easy decision to make. Our Christmas lights had been up since November, so nearly six months as part of our household!
We have been so touched by the flood of D.M.s to our Instagram, the messages pushed through our mail slot, and the comments posted to our neighborhood Nextdoor feed. Heartfelt concerns like “ARE YOU KEEPING THEM UP FOREVER??!!!” particularly moved us, because we could feel the emotional investment some of you had in the longevity of our display. We acknowledge the hope that it inspired, the hope that these lights—bought during a Lowe’s Black Friday BOGO sale—had indeed found their forever home.
That was the hope, anyway. But there were problems almost immediately. The audible sizzle. The constant smell of ozone. The moths. Then, there was the one green bulb that kept fritzing. Some nights it was on, some nights off. This Jekyll-and-Hyde behavior was not something we anticipated having to deal with. We quietly sought professional help. But Shiny Brite Christmas Light Installations L.L.C. wanted to charge us an arm and a leg to assist us with it! Thankfully, we discovered that we could replace the single wonky bulb. Yes, we knew it meant disrupting the color sequence by having two red bulbs next to each other. But what choice did we have? I wish I could say that was the end of it.
You’re familiar with the term “tightly wound”? Well, then you know how being around someone—or something—like that can fracture a family. We weren’t equipped to deal with the coils and tangles in the wires. “Kink” is not a word I toss about lightly—this is a family neighborhood—but a kink is what we got, all right. On more than one occasion in early December, exhausted and frustrated, we asked ourselves, “What are we doing wrong?” I remember falling into bed the night we finally wrangled the lights into submission around the front porch and saying to my loving life partner, “Is it us?” His answer helped restore my sanity: “No. It’s them. It’s those bullshit, cheap-ass Christmas lights. We should take them back.”
I gasped. True, the lights were driving a wedge between us, but return them? Unthinkable. Mainly because I’d lost the receipt, but also because what kind of monsters return an item to their local big-box store after they’ve used it? No. The lights were up, they were part of us now, and up they would stay.
We were finally able to relax and enjoy the peace of the season. Christmas Day became New Year’s Day, then Valentine’s Day, then St. Patrick’s Day. Daffodils bloomed and Easter arrived. Temperatures crept unseasonably into the seventies, but I don’t control the weather.
Colorful dyed eggs in baskets, and colorful plastic eggs dangling from trees, and expensive raw eggs lobbed at our house are apparently perfectly acceptable at this time of year, but colorful lights adorning one’s house, shrubbery, and garage that also play Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” when a sensor is triggered by every Amazon delivery truck? Not so much.
As I stated repeatedly at the last block party: I don’t control Jeff Bezos’s trucks. But we’ve taken the lights down. Contrary to the terrible rumors proliferating online (and at book club at Betsy’s last week), we have not returned them to the manufacturer. They have been comfortably rehomed in the basement, for now. But, rest assured, we remain committed to these lights. They are a permanent part of our family, even if they’re no longer on permanent display. At least until Halloween. ♦
