It was supposed to simplify things, this pre-lit tree. No more untangling lights. No more angst at how to string them. Just four sections, stacked on top of each other, wires plugged into sockets on the trunk, and voila!  Perfection.

“I will not need your help with the tree,” I told my son three years ago when I bought it. “I got this!”

To his amazement – and actually mine – it seemed to be true. Each year, I dragged it in section by section from the garage, assembled it 1-2-3-4, spread out the branches, plugged it in.  Easy peasy.

Granted, I was slightly concerned last year when I noticed a few patches of darkness among its softly lit branches.

“No worries!” I announced.  “I’m sure it came with replacement bulbs.”

Stunningly, to my credit, I’d saved the extra bulbs along with the instructions, which unfortunately I’d never bothered to read – possibly because they were in 6-point type or because I rarely read instructions.

Anyway, once I squinted at the paperwork and then at the tree, I noticed that although I’d been encouraged to replace burned-out bulbs along the way, there were now dozens – possibly hundreds – of dark bulbs among the advertised 1,000 points of light.

“No problem!” I declared. “I will fix this now, before next year’s rush.”

A call to an electrician friend brought disappointing results. “No way!” he said. “I gave up messing with those things years ago.”

An online search located a tree repair service that made house calls – in Des Moines, Iowa – and a voltage detector, “The Lightkeeper Pro,” that would find” voltage leaks” in hopes of repairing them.  Where there was voltage, it would beep.  Where there was none, a bulb had to be replaced. Long story short, there was not much beeping, and I quickly ran out of bulbs.

Defeated,  I contacted a local handyman service.

“No problem!” they said. “Drop off the tree.”  I did, along with the Lightkeeper and some newly ordered bulbs.  After a month, they called back.  “Pick it up,” they said. “No luck.”

As I pulled it – still broken – out of the bag last week and re-read the tree instructions, I had an Aha! The pamphlet covered ALL trees sold by the company.  And mine seemed to come under the “Pre-Lit Hinged and Wrapped” section, not the “Low Voltage LED Trees” section.

This is apparently important because according to the Lightkeeper instructions, non-LED bulbs blacken and die at an astonishing rate in a sort of domino effect. The owner ended a lengthy explanation with the cheery news I just described the only light set that cannot be repaired.

“No problem,” I said, and ordered some strands to fill in. But although in the picture they glowed softly like my remaining lights, in person they were bright white. The tree looked like a weird mix of headlights on a freeway – some gold, some nearly blue.

The only recourse was last-minute, in-person light-shopping, which involved pulling strands from boxes and crawling as inconspicuously as possible under display trees so I could plug the light strands into power strips and examine the color.

Happily, it took only two trips – including one for another hundred lights – before I could weave in replacement strands.

Now, like a dressmaker who winces at every mismatched seam, I sit by the seven-foot giant and spot places where moving a few lights this way or that could restore that pre-lit look.

Instead, I’ll probably wait for the grandkids to come over and perform their annual ritual of ornament-hanging. Mismatched memorabilia have a wonderful way of camouflaging faults.  And now that tinsel has made a comeback, I can let them throw fistfuls to finish the job.

I suspect they’ll think it’s the best tree ever.

Copyright 2019 Pat Snyder