This weekend, Paul and I put up our Christmas lights. While some of our neighbors had their lights up by Thanksgiving, we like a little space in between our holidays. At our house, there are no Christmas lights until December.
I was moving slowly yesterday morning, and by the time I finished my coffee and joined Paul outside, he had screwed a plug adaptor into the front porch light socket, and hung the first set of white icicle lights. (I’m particular about Christmas lights. Other people may deck their houses in multi-colored lights, but the lights on our house? White, and only white. Go ahead; call me a minimalist. As the daughter of a modernist architect, I come by it honestly.) I stood on the porch, watching helpfully, as Paul draped the second strand of lights over small hooks in the porch ceiling. With the two sets of lights plugged in, we flipped the porch light switch. Hundreds of tiny white lights glowed on, but about a quarter of the bulbs remained dark. Several “icicles” on one set of lights - lights that we purchased only last year - refused to shine.
Since icicle lights have become so inexpensive, I imagine that some people treat them as disposable. In fact, the lights that Paul hung yesterday were replacements for our “old” sets, which after five years of hard seasonal use, refused last year to light. My husband comes from thrifty Yankee stock; he thought that there must surely be some way to repair the ailing light string. We were not going to buy more lights this year! A little online research led him to this tool designed for just that purpose. And it works like a charm! Not only did it repair the lights that Paul had strung on the porch; it also brought back to life an old light set that we’d thought was completely dead. Now we’ll have to find a place to hang them.
Today, I unboxed the electric candles for our upstairs windows. When my parents sold their second house, an old farmhouse in College Station, they gave us these lights. The lights looked great in the windows of that house, but didn’t fit in the ’60’s modern house in which I grew up, where my parents still live. I would never have thought to buy electric candles, but they look perfect in the windows of our 1908 house. I set two candles in the large double window in my office, and one in each of the small leaded glass windows of the closets on either side. The small spots of light they provide are a quiet accent to the porch lights below.
Tonight, at our house, it’s starting to look like Christmas. Not a lot, yet, but a little.
Day 3 of my Holidialies advent calendar: the view from my desk tonight, looking out the front window of our house. I love this room lit only by the electric candles and our neighbor’s Christmas lights. Yes, even the multi-colored ones.
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My mom has put electric candles in the windows for as long as I can remember. Last year they finally bit the dust… 35 years is pretty good. The plastic was stained and the wiring just gave out. She bought new ones on QVC that are battery powered and have fancy sensors so they turn on and off at night by themselves. There is supposed to be some sort of traditional meaning of the “light in the window” but I will have to look it up.
BTW… I put my brother’s “pumpkin bisque” recipe up.