mobanmarketREDDING, CT — It’s the week before Christmas, and all through the ‘hood, the house lights are hung to excess, as they should. But that hasn’t always been the case.
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Although the tradition of tricking out your tannenbaum dates from 16th Century Germany when the hausfraus hung candles on the branches (editor’s note: don’t try that today), the custom of draping them around the drainpipes came much later.
Christmas Designers, the mega-site for light meisters, says the practice took off circa 1966, with General Electric’s creation of “smaller, cheaper, and more outdoor-friendly” Merry Midget lights. The lights have only gotten smaller and cheaper every year since.
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This holiday season, it took Chris Simeone and his family at 102 Black Rock Turnpike “about two to three days” to thoroughly light their yard. Still, that’s nothing compared to their first year in Redding five years ago, before he added some special dedicated wiring to handle all the bling.
Prewired or not, the light show in excelsis manages to grow a little bit every year.
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“For example, last year we added the little reindeer, and the two wreaths on the horse posts,” Simeone told Patch.
He says he will keep the lights up through the Feast of Epiphany on Jan. 6 “at the minimum,” but is more than likely to keep them hanging through Jan. 15 because of all the effort involved in putting them up.
And because it’s so much outside work, all at once, Simone knows it’s best to strike when it’s warm. This year, that was a couple of days before Halloween, even though he didn’t throw the switch until Thanksgiving week.
“You can’t tell, it could be freezing the entire time. You’ve got to take the nice day and do it when you can.”
Warm weather or cold, it’s still a lot of trouble to put yourself through during an already over-packed time of year. What’s the reward for all that effort?
Simeone broke it down with an anecdote:
“Somebody drove by, pulled in front of the house, and dropped off a handwritten letter saying ‘thank you so much for making our evening and our children’s evening with your house. It’s absolutely beautiful.’ So I think that the whole world goes through their own set of challenges every single day, every person, but when they drive by the house, and they see that, they forget about it for two minutes. And that’s fantastic.”
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