He talked me into it.

By megret | December 2, 2009 at 12:10 am | 3 comments | Uncategorized

We pulled out our Christmas decorations this past weekend. Tree assembled, we began to unpack and untangle the tiny white lights. One-half of one out of five strands worked. Can you say frustrating?

Ken made a mad dash to the store for more….but before he left, he convinced me to let him change things up a bit. He asked if we could buy colored lights instead.

Now you have to understand the (somewhat snobby) history I have with the whole Christmas light thing. We had colored lights on our tree when I was a child…oh, yes. And they were magical. But as I grew up and turned into the selfish, prudish, impudent teenager (as all children tend to do, or so I hear), I began to question my family’s colored-lights-on-the-Christmas-tree theory.

White lights were more formal. They were more elegant. They were more high-brow. All my friends’ parents had white lights on their tree. And using the same logic I used when it came to buying certain white tennis shoes with little blue labels affixed onto the heels, I argued that we should switch.

Somehow, my sister and I were able to condense the colors down to white with a couple of strands of all-blue one year when I was in high school….and the next year, we went all white lights.

And it stuck. From then on, it was white lights. When I got married and we procured our first fake hand-me-down tree, there was no doubt in my mind as to which colored lights we’d buy. It was like my arm wouldn’t reach toward any other packages of lights on the store shelves. It was what we did.

And this year Ken was challenging it? How dare he?

He came back with colored lights, alright. But not the mini lights….the C9 lights. The bright, ceramic, painted retro bulbs that actually screw in. The lights that can second as runway landing guides for small aircraft. The real deal.

But you know what? They are awesome. The kids think they’re super-awesome. And every retro/childhood/sentimental ornament on our tree looks even more nostalgic amid all of these white-hot, multi-hued bulbs.

The rosy glow when the other lights are off is mesmerizing. And so much heat emits from those things. Our living room is now 2 degrees warmer than all the other rooms. It’s like having an extra space heater.

So I’m sorry, Mom and Dad, for causing you such grief over the petty issue of the color of lightbulbs strung on wire. Life’s too short to do things just to fit in. The kids are still young and in awe about everything — why not let them enjoy the magic of Christmas in every single way, even by changing the color of the lights on our tree?

And I heard recently that “people who only use white lights on their trees are the kind of people who ask people to remove their shoes when they enter their house.”

Yep, that’d be me. (**blushing**)

But I’m trying my hardest to change that little hang-up, too.