The Christmas Tree From Hell

The "Christmas Tree From Hell" - 2010.

In the early 90's, we were still holding out for real Christmas trees each year. You know, the ones that are freshly cut and smell so good? Plus, I was a little snooty in thinking fake trees were just that...fake. The idea of having one seemed like it would be taking a lot out of the Christmas experience for our family.

But then somewhere around the mid-90s the wonderful world of allergies kicked in with both Julie and I and we lost the fight. We decided it would be a lot more comfortable, sneeze-wise in our house if we had a fake tree.

A measly few hundred dollars later we had her up in all her glory. 800-900 built-in lights, all hand wound with authentic looking fake branches; she was the works in all her artificial glory! I even bought a huge molded plastic storage box to keep her safely contained in our mini-barn during the off season.

Then, over the next few years I was 'fortunate' to discover first hand how fragile the lighting system was. Those 800-900 lights on the Tree From Hell were in a string of eighteen independent plug-in sections, each of which would go dark if two or more of its lights went out. Back then, as now, I was and am pretty clueless about lights. I also found out, no matter how careful I was in handling the tree, dozens of lights would go out each year.

The first year I recall noticing this problem I was lucky(?) to hit the local hardware store and purchase a pen-like device that would test an individual light after it was removed from the string. Each light on our tree was secured by a small clasp that required a fingernail maneuver to open and the tightness of the connection required another fingernail maneuver to get it out.  Easy enough for a couple of lights but after a dozen or so the process made fingertips mighty tender. (yeah i know, a "wimp")

Oftentimes, I would attempt to locate the beginning of a string then remove, check, and if needed, replace each light independently until the string had enough gumption to come back on. It was enough to bring small utterances of the blue kind on occasion. One year (the worst) I had to remove, check and replace several hundred of the lights...a process that took me most of the day and had me searching for new cuss words to loudly spread throughout our home.

Along the way I also found out once you have found and purchased replacement lights the battle is far from over. While those tiny lights all appear the same there are literally dozens of different plug-in bases and the diameter of the base will sometimes vary.   There is also some form of electrical variance (ohms?) that can cause perfectly fitting replacements lights to burn out instantly when they are inserted in your string. This all made working replacement lights very hard to find.

I usually had so many lights burned out I didn't want to buy the individual packs of 5 or so replacements they typically sell. It was and is a lot cheaper to buy an entire string of lights and pop them out individually for replacements.

All of these developments served to have me dreading Christmas as I knew the Tree From Hell would kick my ass again. I also knew the experience would start me on a dark cussing streak that would cause Julieann's blood pressure to rise and generally spoil a day or so of our holiday season.

Then, a few years ago, I found a wonderful device.  A pistol shaped contraption that you hook to a light string to restart it. You pull its trigger a few times and it jump starts the string so you can immediately see which lights are out. This meant I no longer had to remove and check lights individually to find out where the weak ones were.

Most recently, as in last year, I had finally found an effective replacement light at Ace hardware and was so proud of that I bought four boxes of 200 light strings. I figured that would last me at least three years considering how many seemed to burn out each year. When I started replacing them this year though, I found out the bases were just slightly smaller than those on our tree and they would be so loose they would fail to make the connection needed to get the whole string working again.

At that, I was ready to give up. I had been to so many stores.  I had tried and bought so many lights that looked like they might work, replaced so many bulbs and had so many tender fingers I was ready to cash it in. Julie witnessed all that and, much to my surprise seemed to agree. In fact, she said, "We just won't have a tree this year." I was with her on that notion and stashed the entire three piece contraption along our fence for later disposal. Then I hit Google to see what replacement trees might cost. I was figuring (hoping) the technology might have improved and we might get a better model. What I quickly found out was that getting a comparable tree would cost us roughly a thousand dollars. That represented a fair amount of chrome for my Harley so I quickly decided to hit the replacement bulb circuit again.

I found Phillips lights at Target and was encouraged. I brought them home, removed and plugged one into our tree and it instantly burnt out. Deja vu? Yes. No problem though as I am a veteran light-replacer of many years. I hit the road again... nothing different at Ace hardware but two promising possibilities at Orchard hardware including GE and some generic brand. The GE's worked and now we have a bag full of several boxes of replacements.

The Christmas Tree From Hell is working too.  But I know, deep down inside her fake branches she is thinking of ways to torment me next year. Inside that Beauty is a true Beast.  I will be ready though.  I will have two (yes two) diagnostic guns and several boxes of tried and true GE bulbs. Bring it on Tree!