Today I’m excited because I have fantastic Christmas tree
decorating tips for you! However, there is a small caveat here,
which is a fancy way of saying, “When attempting this, make sure to
first get rid of your spouse, kids, animals and any assorted
relatives that may be lurking about the premises.”
Today I’m excited because I have fantastic Christmas tree decorating tips for you! However, there is a small caveat here, which is a fancy way of saying, “When attempting this, make sure to first get rid of your spouse, kids, animals and any assorted relatives that may be lurking about the premises.”
But first let me give you the backstory on how this great discovery came about.
At our house my spouse always put the lights on the Christmas tree, and then I did the rest. Now, that was peachy except my engineer husband perfectly spaced the lights an equal distance apart, which is great in theory but, truthfully, my main criterion when it comes to Christmas tree lights isn’t spacing – it’s magnitude. I love heaps of lights on the tree, and when they’re spread out in a precise, engineer-type manner, this doesn’t necessarily equate to megatons of lights.
So, although I knew better, several years ago I made just the teeniest suggestion. “You know,” I said as warmly as I could, “I was thinking the lights might look more ‘natural’ if they weren’t placed so evenly on the tree.”
“Gale, ‘natural’ went out the window when you decided to put lights on an imitation tree,” he responded in that infuriatingly truthful way of his. And, you guessed it. You-know-who got the job of attaching the tree lights forevermore.
Ah, but that misfortune had a silver lining. Free to manage the lights myself, suddenly they were like drugs. I frequented after-Christmas sales, scooping up strings of lights for mere pennies. I put them everywhere; I even stuffed empty wine bottles with glowing lights. And of course our Christmas trees were blazing (yes, “trees;” I had segued into multiple trees by this time).
Our house was so festooned with lights we were getting thank you cards from the electric company. You could find our house from space. But when SFO called to complain that their 747s were trying to land on our driveway, forcing pilots to use night-vision goggles to find the real airport, I figured it was time to cut back. A little.
However, my biggest challenge when putting the lights on the Christmas tree is getting them near the top. When you’re 5-feet, 2-inches in altitude, anything taller than a refrigerator is ginormous. Even with a ladder it was difficult. There are only so many times you can hike up that ladder, loop on some lights, hike back down, rotate the ladder and start all over again. It was exhausting!
So here’s my exciting news, Christmas tree decorators: the best method ever for putting lights on the upper-most branches of your tree. And please don’t say, “pre-lit tree.” I mean, I have my principals, people!
Simply take the longest string of lights you can find and make a big loop, sort of like a lariat. Then stand back and, just like throwing a lasso, sling those lights up and over the treetop and – voila! A perfect landing every time! I don’t know how it works, but it does. Not enough lights? Repeat. Then repeat again. Each time you fling those lights up over the tree, they land flawlessly.
Now, you might think all this lobbing of lights might make for a bit of a rats nest when it comes to all those flung-about wires in the tree, right? Well, you’d think. So here’s the solution: garlands. Yep. At the next post-Christmas sale, load up with 40 or so garlands. When you’ve finished the lights, you just stuff those babies into every crevice where a wire might even THINK about being visible. By the time you get around to attaching the actual ornaments there won’t even be that much left to do. And people will think Martha Stewart herself stopped by to decorate your tree.
But remember: this is our secret. Because if you’re married to an engineer like I am, my method of Christmas tree decorating might cause your spouse to begin, you know, hyperventilating. And you sure don’t want anybody passing out and falling into your Christmas tree; it could take months to untangle them from all those lights.
