Nothing is better than Christmas time!  I get so excited to put up the tree and all the decorations and everything.  So yesterday was perfect!  It started snowing out, I was reading Evie some Christmas stories, singing her Christmas songs, etc.  I got out the tree and assembled it and then I put the lights on.  We bought these strands of old fashioned, glowy lights like we used to have when I was little.  I was pretty excited about them;  I like them way better than the newer small lights that we’ve used for the past couple of years.  So I got the lights on the tree and everything was ready for the ornaments.

Thats when everything went bad.

I should have read the omens correctly when the beautiful snow turned into yucky cold rain and washed off the inch or so of accumulation we had.  So first off, let me say that there were a few issues with the lights the other day that I sort of glossed over in my Christmas euphoria.  First off apparently they are covered in lead.  It says so on the box, but probably nobody looks at the box before they throw it away.  Second off, one of the bulbs broke for no reason at all.  I don’t even know what caused it to break, but of course now there is tiny glass shards all over.  So today I had the lights on because Evie likes looking at them and then I noticed that they were melting the tree!!!  So we had to take them off the tree because we don’t want to ruin it or have a fire or something.  So instead we draped them over our bookcases.  While we were getting that set up, the first strand blew a fuse.  I replaced the fuse and as soon as I plugged it in it blew the second fuse.  At this point there were only 2 strands plugged together and the directions clearly state you can have more than that plugged together safely.  I don’t know if there is some electrical flaw in the strand or what.

So at this point we have strands of lights dripping in lead, shorting out and setting fire to everything they meet while shattering glass shards all over the place.  The only way these things could be more dangerous is if they were filled with angry bees!

This is on top of the fact that there were about 6 bulbs already burned out in 3 strands the first time they were ever lit, and the paint is already being chipped off some of the bulbs.  So I’ve boxed up all the lights again to deal with them next year.  I was this close to throwing them all away but I resisted.  So now I have to put new lights on the tree (for the 3rd time if you count the time when Sara made me redo it because they weren’t spread out enough!)

Oh well, I had the Christmas spirit…