Christmas Lights at the Griswold’s

Usually every year at this time I have always gotten into the Christmas season with a renewed sense of my childhood. For many years I was like Clark Griswold putting light after light up all over the house or yards. It started when I lived in Atlanta and there were many years it seemed our family experienced many of the things that the Griswold family did. I spent year after year collecting lights from garage sales, after Christmas sales, and even a discard here and there.


There were a couple of years when our house could be seen from miles away. It may have taken a couple of tries, but when they lit up, Clark W. Griswold would have been green (and red) with envy. You know they were great when the neighbors complained.


We had those times of going out to the country to find and cut our own tree spending hours looking for that perfect one. One year we found one on a slightly rainy day and when we walked up over a hill and saw this tree the Heaven’s opened up with the only bit of sun to be seen that day and it was illuminating our ‘perfect’ tree. We loaded it up on the car and headed home where we discovered it was almost four feet to tall so I had to cut a bunch off of it to get it inside the house. That was after taking out a sliding glass door to have enough clearance to bring it inside and once the rope was cut allowing the branches to fan out into the perfect shaped tree it filled the room and had to be tied up with clear fishing line to keep the dog from knocking it over as he walked by.


We lived in Utah for a time and those years at Christmas were more in line with a country style Christmas with all of the trimmings. My lights were not as plentiful with the snow but once they were up it was still nice. Alaska has a bit more planning than the Lower 48 since to beat the snowfall you have to start putting the lights up before Halloween since that is when we receive our first snowfalls each year.


I just haven’t been able to get into the “spirit” this year. I still have not put any outside lights up yet and with a foot of snow on the ground and decks I doubt I will do much this year. I will wrap the decks with lights and ribbons and I am sure there will be a wreath on the door and one in the middle of the deck out front. I doubt I will try to get the house outlined this year with the icicle lights. I didn’t want to deal with the tree. Could be partially because we had so many issues with the lights last year; somehow I had taken the one I had for several years to the dump and we found one on sale at Sears, then again, it could be that we didn’t get the tree down until, I dunno Moose season? It seemed like a long freaking time is all I know.


So I looked everywhere today and found most of the decorations as I had stored them so it would be an easy find when the time came to put them up. But the tree this year was nowhere to be found. I looked in the garage, the ‘hole’ a 10’x10’ ‘cellar’ we can keep things at a constant temperature. It was not in there with the other items and I looked in the shed out back with no luck so after several trips out through the snow and in darkness the last time I was able to find the tree buried behind several other boxes.


I got the decorations together and my wife puts everything with the tree up this year, and the lights. LAST YEAR, after our light fiasco, I went out and bought ALL NEW lights for our tree. When time came to put it up and everything adjusted so it would look right, (It’s a three-sectioned artificial one, pre-wired with lights which could not be easier.) I plugged it in and . . . yep. You guessed it. No lights came on. Well, that’s not exactly true. The top third was lit and one small section on the bottom tier lit up. I checked all those little fuses on the plug but you guessed it, Nothing. After a few tries and much aggravation it finally was lit up, it was gorgeous. There were 400 sparkling white lights coming at you from every possible angle . . . it rocked.


And the other lights inside the house on the steps with their multicolored hues seemed to make things appear festive and appropriate for the season. So I felt like Clark W. Griswold tonight at least for a little while.


Happy Holiday Season from Alaska!


Ice

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