We follow a strict 25-step protocol for putting up the Christmas lights every year at our house. It goes like this.
1. My husband announces it's time to put up the lights, and I agree.
2. He heads for the attic and pulls out plastic tub after tub (after tub!) of said lights, which we have been collecting since we got married.
3. Because you never know when you might need a strand of Christmas lights that you bought in 1977!
4. Then comes the "testing" part.
5. My husband drags out each strand of lights to see which ones have decided to work this year.
6. It's pretty much a crapshoot.
7. Lights that used to work don't.
8. Lights that haven't worked since 1977 do.
9. It must be said that my husband is remarkably patient during this long and tedious process.
10. He's still full of good will and holiday hopefulness that things will go smoothly this year.
11. Then comes the "putting up" part.
12. My husband heads outside, packing strands of coiled wire like he's the Witchita Lineman.
13. Before I know it he's up in the trees!
14. And on the housetop! (Click! Click! Click!)
15. He's stringing lights here!
16. He's stringing lights there!
17. He's stringing Christmas lights everywhere!
18. Then comes the "swearing" part.
19. In spite of the fact he's carefully tested every strand of light before stringing them outside, some of them suddenly go on strike.
20. "Hell no, we won't glow," the Christmas lights say.
21. "Seriously?" My husband says. "This is what happens after I spent ALL THAT TIME TESTING YOU GUYS?"
22. It's not fair.
23. Life is not fair.
24. Then comes the part where I wish my husband wasn't stuck up in a tree, swearing.
25. Then I remind myself that it could be worse. At least I married a man who is willing to put up the lights so that I don't have to.
My own mother was not so lucky. She married a guy who believed in Christmas Lights for Life. In other words, my father believed you should put up the lights once and then leave them up forever. We had blue lights for a decade or so until my mother decided she was sick of them. So one year she crawled up on the roof by herself to switch them out and got stuck up there when her ladder crashed to the ground.
It was bad. Nobody knew where she was. Her family was like, "Has anybody seen Mom recently?"
Finally, a neighbor down the street (this is the truth) spotted her camped out on the roof and helped her down, which is more than any of her own flesh and blood did. So yeah. When it comes to putting up Christmas lights, I have it made in the shade.
Still. There's always a point where I begin to think putting up lights isn't worth the hassle. Until the moment when we flip the switch and the front yard lights up, full of magic.
And that's when I know we'll put those lights up next year, too.