Until now, I thought hiring professionals to string Christmas lights was all about convenience and saving yourself the time and risk of being up on the roof. But a recent DIY attempt has shown me the (literal) light.
Last weekend, on the day before our neighborhood held its annual holiday party, Tom and I decided to jazz up the streetlight that stands next to our neighborhood’s entrance sign. We went to Home Depot and bought what we thought we’d need, planning to have the project done 15 minutes after the sun went down.
Our next-door neighbor had already framed the entrance sign with cute candy cane decorations, so we planned to continue the theme with a few strings of red and white lights. I wanted the streetlight to look like a candy cane, with broad red and white stripes spiraling down the pole. So easy, right? Just two colors. Simple design. How could it go wrong?
It goes wrong when you put lights in the wrong hands. It’s simple math. When you add one middle-aged sales director to one middle-aged newspaper columnist, you get zero talent at stringing lights. Absolutely none of our professional skills transfer over to light installation. I’m not sure why we ever thought they would. This project didn’t benefit one bit from my ability to spot a sentence fragment. And Tom’s negotiating skills failed to persuade the lights to stay in straight lines.
Our first attempt was a complete failure, but at least we realized early in the process that we’d made a mistake. We used a string of lights with large, alternating red and white bulbs that were spaced too far apart and stuck straight out. Halfway through wrapping the pole, we realized that it looked like the streetlight had sprouted inflamed porcupine quills. Definitely not the candy cane vibe we were hoping for.
So we went back to Home Depot to exchange the big bulbs for smaller ones. We bought a box of red lights and a box of white, so we could separate the stripes. I even googled “how to string lights on a pole to make it look like a candy cane.” The internet was happy to show me a gazillion videos of people who made it look so easy — like taking candy canes from a baby.
“Start at the top,” they said, and “make sure to keep the spacing of the stripes nice and even.” That’s what we thought we were doing. We honestly did. But the cords kept slipping out of place, and no amount of black electrical tape tamed the unruly mess.
But what we lacked in talent we made up for in stubborn determination, so we kept going even though the temperature had dropped considerably and our hands were getting numb. We added one string, then another, and then a third for good measure. Then we walked across the street to gaze upon our creation from a distance, hoping our candy cane dream would be glowing back at us.
It was not.
Sadly, we didn’t see stripes of red and white. It looks more like we tossed candy canes into a hay thrasher and then spewed the fragments out at the light pole.
We left the lights up because they’re still festive, even though they don’t look at all how we’d hoped. We’ll tell the neighbors that a merry mishmash of red and white lights is what we were going for all along.
And perhaps it’s good this happened the way it did. Sometimes a failure is exactly what you need to keep your holiday hubris in check. If we’d managed to turn that streetlight into a glowing candy cane with relative ease, the power would’ve gone straight to our heads. We’d have probably come back home, scaled a ladder with lights in tow, and ended up tumbling off our roof, just in time for Christmas. I’m glad we learned our lesson while our feet were still safely on the ground.
And to all the professional light installers out there, you have our newfound respect and admiration. Next year, we’ll stay in our laptop lane and let the pros do the hard stuff.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her book is available on Amazon.