Pre-lit Christmas trees = very good.
Our flocked pre-lit Christmas tree = beautiful.
Hunting through a flocked, pre-lit Christmas tree to find the dead bulbs keeping the top of the tree from lighting – TORTURE!
About a week ago the top quarter of our tree just went dark. Weird, I thought, what about that whole stay-lit technology of wiring the series of bulbs with shunts that keep the string lit even if a bulb goes out? So, I figure the problem must be a blown fuse in the top strand. To my surprise the fuse was fine. Crap. So the hunt begins. Which of the dark bulbs is the bad one keeping the string from lighting. Now I don’t remember how many bulbs are in our tree, but it’s a crap load. And to make things tricky, our flocked tree has most bulbs coated with clumps of ‘snow’ so you can’t even casually find them when they’re not lit.
I start by testing one random bulb from the top in the lower part of the tree. The bulb doesn’t light and the lower string stays lit. Hmmm. I try the good bulb in the top. Nothing. Okay, that was a bad bulb. I replace it by snagging a bulb from a spare string, pulling the bulb from that holder and inserting it into the holder that the tree uses. As common as all Christmas bulbs are, you’d think the bulb base/holder would be universal – but, nooooo, everyone makes them differently. Which means every time I need to replace a bulb I need to pull the old and new bulbs from their bases and insert the new one, carefully feeding in the two tiny wires, into the correct base. This only seems mildly annoying…at first.
I keep repeating the process of pulling a bulb from the top and testing it in a working part of the tree. Over and over, every bulb I pull down is bad. With every replacement I put in, I feel more and more like Clark Griswold anticipating the miraculous lighting of the whole lot with a glorious choir singing in the background. After 35 bulbs, I run out to the store to buy another strand to supply me with more bulbs (by the way you can either buy a pack of 5 replacement bulbs for 99 cents, or a 50 light strand for 2 bucks).
After a while, finding bulbs that I haven’t replaced becomes some freakish yuletide Where’s Waldo exercise. Following the wire strands seem logical enough until you see how tightly wound they are around the branches. Plus, there’s all that damn flock in the way.
After inserting the 58th new bulb, I’m covered in flock as if I’ve been making artificial snow angels all day, and the choir launches into song.
NEED MORE PICTURES!!!