Cup O’ Joe: Lighting up the night

The Christmas season was officially kicked off in style Saturday evening as the Greater Houlton Chamber of Commerce held its annual Holiday Light Parade.
An atypically warm evening greeted the thousands of individuals who filled downtown’s Market Square and parade route as they anxiously awaited the arrival of Santa Claus. For many, the prime watching spot was from their vehicles as a trip up North Street found people huddled inside their cars, filling every possible parking lot along the road.
    This year’s light parade, while a bit smaller than previous years, still featured many decorative displays. Cameron Clark was once again the hit of the parade as he pedaled his multi-wheeled unicycle down the streets, complete with battery powered lights and an elf costume. Kudos as well to members of the Houlton High School cheering squad for canvassing downtown Market Square selling cookies, hot chocolate, coffee and other treats as people anxiously awaited the start of the parade.
Houlton’s Light Parade traditionally signals the official start of the holiday shopping season, but it seems with each passing year, the Christmas rush gets started earlier and earlier. It’s not uncommon these days to find Christmas decorations in stores as soon as all of the Halloween paraphernalia is taken down.
In our house, Thanksgiving weekend is the time we traditionally put up the Christmas decorations. Saturday morning was spent scouring the basement, looking through piles of plastic tote containers for all of the holiday lights, knick-knacks and stockings.
One would think a person would learn from previous years and properly label each plastic bucket, so that the search for holiday ornaments did not encompass looking through the summer shorts tote or the miscellaneous tote of picture frames that no longer hold photos that we have stashed for some reason.
Putting up the tree is always an adventure too. In years past, we would buy a real tree at a “cut-your-own” lot, which would normally take three times as long as it should as I always had to find just the right tree. But, in recent years, we have forgone the real tree for an artificial one and this year the kids were eager to help.
Every year, I tell myself that I will do a better job of putting the Christmas lights away so that there are no tangles in the line. I carefully wrap each string of lights so they will untangle nice and neat. And every year, something happens to the lights between January and November as some light gremlin gets into the box and turns what was once a well-wrapped coil into a muddled mess of tangles.
This year was no different, of course and as I tried to patiently unwrap each string, I couldn’t help but think of the “Twelve Pains of Christmas” song. “Fine, you’re so smart, you rig up the lights!”
There is no worse feeling than wrapping lights around the tree and just as you get to the top, one of the colors goes out due to a loose bulb or short in the line. And no matter how much shaking and jiggling, that row of colors never seems to come back on.
Choosing which type of lights to put on is another family debate. It’s one my wife sadly loses each year, now that the children are more vocal in the wishes. Before children we alternated between white lights and colored lights each year. I was, at first, deeply against the use of white lights, but have to admit they did look quite nice. The kids, however, only want colored lights and since this is their holiday, they win out in the great light debate.
Decorating the tree is also a fun trip down memory lane as we string the many handmade ornaments the girls have colored and created over the years. There’s the one that has a photo of our first daughter’s first Christmas and the handprint ornaments made by each of them. There’s also the collection of simple multicolored glass balls from my childhood and a few ornaments from my wife’s childhood too.
My parents no longer put up a Christmas tree since their living room is “too small,” or so they say. These days, they use a small fiber optic tree that sits on an end table. Strange thing is it’s the same living room they’ve always had and we had a tree. Of course the tree rarely went up until a couple of weeks before Christmas and often was taken down the day after the holiday.
If I had my way, and money was no object, I’d do a full Clark Griswold at our house with lights all over the place, blowing power circuits for blocks and putting out enough wattage to view the house from space. But my wife tempers me and pulls me back each year saying less is more. She’s probably right, but I can still dream can’t I?
Joseph Cyr is a staff writer for the Houlton Pioneer Times. He can be reached at pioneertimes@nepublish.com or 532-2281.