The Tangled Tree Lights Problem, Solved

For twenty-four years I put the lights on our Christmas tree by hand, and for twenty-four years I told myself that was part of the fun. It was not part of the fun. It was an afternoon on my knees with a knot of wire in my lap, testing bulbs one at a time while the daylight went out of the front window.

We bought that first tree the year we moved into this house. A bare seven foot artificial, plain as a broom, and it did its job for a long time. Every strand went on by hand in November and came off again in January. For years I did not mind. Then I started to dread it.

The year I stopped, three small things piled up. Half a strand went dark and no amount of wiggling brought it back. The top section quit holding its shape. And I sat on the floor with a tangle across my knees and thought, I have been doing this for over twenty years.

So I went looking at prelit trees. The one I kept coming back to was the Hykolity 7.5 ft prelit tree. What decided it was not a photograph. It was the plain list of what the thing actually is: 1,450 branch tips, 450 warm white LED lights already wound onto the branches, hinged sections, and a metal stand.

Gary carried the box up from the basement that first November. I had the tree standing in about twenty minutes. The lights were already on it. I want to say that plainly, because I had spent a long time not believing it would make any real difference to my November.

Twenty minutes to stand it up, forty more to fluff the branches, and the lights were already on it. I have not untangled a strand since.

The first thing I noticed is how much of the job is simply gone. There is no stringing. The 450 warm white LED lights are attached to the branches, and they have lit every November since. One cord, one outlet behind the tree, and that is the whole electrical situation in my living room now. I do not own an extension cord anymore.

The second thing is the fluffing, and I will be honest about it because nobody told me. Hinged sections means the branches fold out and drop into place, and it takes me about forty more minutes to open the tips and spread them so the tree does not look like it came straight out of a box. I do that part myself. Gary's job begins and ends with carrying the box up the stairs.

Forty minutes sounds like a lot until you set it beside the afternoon I used to spend on the floor. And the 1,450 tips earn the time. There are enough of them that ornaments sit in the branches instead of swinging on bare wire, and the tree reads full from the sidewalk, which is the only view that matters to me. The Hykolity measures 54 inches across and 90 inches tall, so it is wider than the old one was. I moved the side table by the window and it has been fine there ever since.

The metal stand is the part I did not expect to care about. The old tree leaned, always, and by Christmas Eve it was listing toward the window like it had somewhere to be. The Hykolity has not leaned once in three Novembers, and I have stopped folding a magazine under one side. The listing also says the branches are flame resistant, which I have never needed to test and am glad of anyway.

The old bare tree sat on a basement shelf for a year before we finally gave it away. I felt a little sentimental about it, which is silly for something made of wire and plastic, but there it is.

What would I change? Two things, and neither one is the tree. I should have measured the window corner before I bought anything, because a wide tree in a small corner is its own problem. And I should have bought it in October instead of the weekend after Thanksgiving, when I wanted it up that same afternoon and had to wait. The Hykolity goes back in the box it came in every January and lives on a basement shelf, same as everything else in this house.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you that a prelit tree does not make Christmas. It buys back an afternoon. That is the whole promise and it is worth something, especially if you have been carrying that November afternoon on your knees for as long as I did. If the stringing is the part you dread, fix the dread. Do not try to talk yourself into liking it.

I would also tell you the honest part. It is still an artificial tree. It does not smell like anything. The fluffing is real work, and if you skip it, it shows, so give it the forty minutes the first year and it holds that shape for you afterward. Then keep the box, keep the stand with it, and buy the size your room can hold instead of the size the photo suggests.