Opinion: The lighter side of holiday decorations
Brian Adams of Andover, Mass., is a UNH alumnus originally from Londonderry. He was previously a sketch comedy writing instructor and staff writer at ImprovBoston and a founding contributor to satirical online newspaper Recyculus. He is a father to three girls ages 6 and under.
In the midst of the holiday season, there are a number of traditions that not only showcase your holiday spirit but also signal to others that you’ve got your act together.
Take the annual holiday card for example. Whether or not anyone actually likes your final product, just the timely completion of such a card is a sign that you’ve successfully managed to take a family photograph, gather a long list of addresses, lick enough envelopes that your tongue tastes like glue for a week, and then locate a post office. That’s an organized family right there.
That is not why I have gathered you here today, though. Make no mistake, the display of competence which I speak of is also a tradition firmly entrenched within the holiday season. It is the often-attempted but infrequently-perfected Christmas light display.
At some point after the discovery of electricity, folks decided to show their holiday spirit in a brand new way. Filled with the holiday spirit, a few helpings of eggnog, and a blatant disregard for their own personal safety, they would climb a twenty-foot ladder, get a staple gun, and affix tiny lights along their roof with the help of one or two or twelve extension cords. It was a way to let your neighbors know that when it comes to Christmas, you meant business.
As the years passed, technology has found its way into the realm of holiday decorations and now there are few limits on what can be accomplished with a few thousand dollars and infinite amounts of time. Clark Griswold himself would shed a tear of joy just looking at some of the multimedia displays around town that incorporate music with coordinated light movements, the likes of which could only be seen at Disney World in years past. I’ve even seen movie clips projected on the garage doors of some particularly dedicated homeowners.
Then, there’s my house.
My wife has been begging me for years to step up my game when it comes to our Christmas light display. It shouldn’t be very hard to do, I thought, since the previous four Christmases we’ve lived in our house, we haven’t had a single decorative bulb out front.
It’s not that I specifically object to the holidays or home decoration or electric bills that resemble the national debt, I just don’t know where to start. Until a few years ago, I had spent my adult life in condos near the city. The options for decorating the outside of a house were overwhelming.
After scanning through the six hundred varieties of lights available online, I was drawn to the potential promise of the solar-powered variety. It would be nice to never have to remember to turn the lights on every night, plus they’d be shining brightly whether we were home or away. I’d be the talk of the neighborhood!
“Old Man Adams has really hit his stride,” they’d say. “He really came out of nowhere with this display. I heard his lights were solar powered - genius!” The other children in the neighborhood would stare at our house through their windows and marvel at the embodiment of holiday spirit that they were witnessing.
Not long after my fantasies of holiday triumph began, my Amazon package arrived. Actually, it was less like a package and more like an envelope. “This can’t possibly be all of my lights,” I thought. As it turns out, it was. Well, I would have to order more, but this was enough to begin designing my magical winter wonderland.
I attached the plastic spike to the miniature solar panel, which connected to the string of lights, pushed the button and...boom! Lights are on. Even easier than I thought. String number two went just as smoothly. Why had I been avoiding this? So simple!
“The lights look nice,” my wife said when she returned home. “Are you going to do the other side tomorrow? Only one side is lit up.” Ah, it had begun.
“Maybe that one just needs to charge up in the sunlight tomorrow,” I told her.
Sure enough, the very next night, the problematic set of lights had come back to life. Yet, somehow, the other side was now dark.
My six-year-old daughter came out to see what I was doing as I tried to fix the lights once more.
“Dad, this looks kind of…sad.”
I wish I could say she was wrong. It did look sad. The pattern continued for days, one side on, one side off, until I finally accepted defeat.
My first attempt at a light display may have been an abject failure, but as I tell my daughter who is now learning to read, practice makes perfect. I will be back next year with a new plan. Even if perfection is the goal, as in gift-giving, I like to think that it’s the thought that counts.
Those of you who are at the top of your holiday game, please keep up the good work and continue to inspire the rest of us. As for those of you in my camp, you’ll just have to trust me that if the effort is there, then so is the holiday spirit. It’s just harder to see when it’s not fully illuminated.
