You know what happens. You’re busy attempting to unravel the past ten years’ worth of twinkling lights from the little white plastic racks they came on. You unwind foot after foot, trailing it through hallways and up stairs, around corners, through the house, in the kitchen, until you begin to come to the conclusion that the lights are hopelessly, irrevocably entwined. You pull and twist, somebody steps on a bulb in the hallway, grinding tiny shards of colored glass into the carpet and you finally find the plug. You press it triumphantly into the outlet and – ta-da – nothing happens.

The Christmas spirit leaves you cursing, slamming things and looking for real holiday spirits – like the kind that come in bottles with drawings of dapper gentlemen in top-hats on them.

Why hadn’t you taken more care when putting the lights away last season? In your February funk, you rolled the strings of lights into balls and shoved them into plastic bags, still high from having consumed an entire box of Valentine’s chocolates, meant for your beloved but left unclaimed. You decry the holiday, the outlets crusted with frost, the crumpled box you also shoved into the bag, and that sadistic bastard is responsible for the fact that your house needs to be visible from the space shuttle between December and February.

That frustration can lead you to take desperate measures, or maybe you’ll just try to pawn the problem off on some other sap with an ad on CraigsList, such as this one in Hartford, Connecticut under the header, “Free Christmas lights - you untangle.” “I have a jumble of about 6 strings of Christmas lights that I’d like to get rid of QUICKLY before I move! They’re various lengths, and various colors - some strings are all blue, orange, red, etc. They’re absolutely free - you pick up & you untangle. :)”

But you are not fooled by the smiley face emoticon at the end of the ad. No, you know that the promise of a festival of “absolutely free” lights is the Devil’s candy. Fear not, brave decorator, there are solutions out there. For example, you could convert to Judaism. There would be no more plug-in bulbs to screw around with; just one candle to light every night. And Chanukah, that festival of lights right near Christmas, is eight glorious nights, not just one.

If you are too attached to your Christianity to give up stringing colored bulbs, how about installing a handy soffet with built-in holiday lights? This solution takes real dedication, it’s a semi-permanent home improvement, but ends the hassle of untangling, or limits it to the tree at least. Unless, of course, you buy an artificial tree with built-in lights. This invention is a miracle of modern convenience. If you are going to go with an artificial tree in the first place, why not just go all the way with it. Pop it open like an umbrella and you’re done. The Bethlehem 6 1/2’ Fraser Fir from QVC will only run you about $180 – quite a bargain when you consider that the PVC tree will last years. And you don’t even have to go out into the cold. Oh, QVC, you are my friend, my lover and my savior.

If you a stickler for authenticity, but still, you know, sort of lazy, there are companies that specialize in coming to your home and making sure that your lighting display zaps massive amounts of electricity from the grid, promising a fun holiday blackout and at the same time, kicks your neighbors’ displays asses. Looks Great Services in Huntington was recently written about in the New York Times, with special mention given to the work they did on a Dix Hills’ woman’s weeping cherry tree for a cost of $10,000 – for the one tree. The company can make as much as $30,000 per house. That’s a whole lot of desire to keep up with the Jones’s.

The funny thing about this holiday lighting arms race is that the end result is generally gawkers: folks who will go out for a country drive to look at the big, big light shows on the big, big houses. And the very people who are festooning their acres with red and green are probably some of the very same people who would like to string summer tourists up by strands of garland and lights for the infraction of driving by their houses just four months earlier.

So, why do we put up lights in the first place? Blame Martin Luther. Not only did he shake the entire church up with his little list, he’s also responsible for the practice of indoor Christmas decorations. The story goes that, while walking through the woods on evening, Marty saw the dew on the fir trees glistening in the moonlight. When he got home he brought inside a small fir and affixed candles, which he lit in an attempt to recreate the effect of the glistening dew. The East Hampton Fire Department clearly owes a debt to Thomas Edison or whoever was ultimately responsible for strings of electrified lights.

– John Capone