It’s never a simple matter for Kathy and I to get our halls decked for Christmas – not with all of the concerts and other special activities that keep us hopping this time of year. It’s too bad we can’t just wait for a slower, sleepier time of year like the second week in Lent to decorate the house, but that would be pretty strange, even for the Bergs! We decided this year to do our Christmas decorating in phases – and for some reason, we decided that phase one would be to adorn our staircase with a beautiful garland which was made especially for us by our good friend Barb Dehne as a housewarming gift. Barb took one look at our staircase – something she doesn’t have in her own home – and decided that we had to have a garland for this time of year, and very graciously offered to make one herself. It’s gorgeous and we have had it up almost every Christmas that we’ve lived here- although last year we found ourselves a bit too frazzled for our own good and left the staircase bare. (We had enough yuletide excitement around here just from our new Christmas tree, which is probably why we took a break from the garland.) And that made us even more anxious to get it up again- and we especially looked forward to the moment when we would plug in the light cords and set all those bulbs a-blazing, making the garland still more beautiful – especially at night. Sounds good- except that when we went to plug in the first string of lights – there was nothing. With mounting concern, we turned to the next string of lights- and again, nothing. At this point, it started to look like we must have a blown fuse or something- and when we plugged in the third and final string of lights with no results, we were even more certain that it had to be a problem at the electrical outlet- for what are the odds of three different strings of lights all going bad simultaneously?
Except that when we plugged one of our cordless phones into the socket in question, fully expecting it to be as dead as our lights, it instead beeped and lit up just like it always done. And we were suddenly left with three strings of Christmas lights intertwined into our garland – and NONE of them working.
Leave it to my wife to come up with a positive spin on all this. “Let’s think of this as our way of going green with our greenery,” she said with a surprisingly sincere smile on her face. And she’s absolutely right. Our garland is truly beautiful without the strings of lights illuminated – and we are happy to go the simple route.
And besides, what choice do we have?