We went home and set up the tree. Then my mother, sister, and I went about the slow, torturous process of wrapping the lights around the branches. We ran out of lights and had to drive back to Greenville for another half dozen boxes, the price tags having been removed before we carried them to the car where my father was waiting.
It was a beautiful tree. We put long garlands on it instead of icicles. I don’t like garlands. The moment I had my own tree, the icicles went back on the REAL tree. (Just a little FYI). New Year’s Day we spent hours unwinding the lights. Several years later someone (okay, it was me) had the bright idea of just taking the tree back upstairs with the lights on it. My parents had a huge attic. It was an idea whose time had come. (My mother to this day puts her artificial trees up with the lights on them).
Fast forward
Years later (George Bush #41 was President) my mother and I made the mistake of going into business together. Part of our 10,000 square foot gift shop included a Christmas shop. Here I must add that we had a wonderful old renovated flour mill. It was so well built we did not have air-conditioning, even in the hot and humid South Carolina summers. There were maybe four weeks in the summer when it was miserably hot. Naturally those were the weeks we would choose to re-decorate the Christmas shop and re-do 25 Christmas Trees.
I must also add this is when I lost all religion. Friends would come by the shop just to watch me get mad. My mother and I would go to war with one another. I swear our regular customers would take bets on who would end up killing whom. Then we would finish the redecorating and peace would prevail – until the bills started coming in for all that new Christmas merchandise.
FYI – never go into business with your mother.
The first year we were in business, I learned how to ‘professionally’ light an artificial Christmas tree. Until I came to my senses and closed the shop five years later, I always won first place in the local celebration of Christmas trees.
How to Professionally Light a Christmas Tree
Professional Christmas trees look good because they have so darn many lights in them. There is a very specific way to attach these lights. Done properly, when the time comes to remove the lights they just ‘fall off’ and you put them into single strand rolls making sure the male part of the plug is on the outside of the strand.
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