Fireside Christmas Glow

Decorating our barn for Christmas is a challenge since we have limited living space and limited power. Necessity being the mother of invention and an indomitable Christmas spirit makes for some interesting solutions. Better Homes and Gardens won't be beating a path to our barn door for a Christmas cover layout, but in a simpler folksy way, we really enjoy it. Last year we strapped our Christmas tree to one of the poles holding the clothes line and hung bird feeders and suet balls on it. We loved it. The bird feeders looked like small Nativities with Angels fluttering to and fro.

As nice as this was during the day, it left the evenings void of the warmth that a lighted tree imparts. So this year, we added lights. I spent a lot of time looking for the lights upstairs in the barn with no luck while Kris was off in Bangor. I looked everywhere I could think of including where she thought they might be. When she got home she went upstairs and retrieved them in just a few moments. Surprised, I asked where she found them.
"Right where I told you they were," she clucked.
She can be soooo irritating.

We checked the lights to be sure they worked and, surprisingly, with a bit of help from a shake or two, they all twinkled to life. Huh, maybe this was going to go better than I thought.

I had to go to town and when I got back Kris had the lights on. So we lit the tree and half of them didn't work. It was getting late and we left it for the night.

Next day grandson Ethan and I took those lights off and put on different lights and then went on to scoop poop in the horse paddock. Kris came home and pointed out that we had left holes in the lighting coverage. Well, we had one strand of lights about 16 feet long and tree about 12' tall. Some people are just way too picky.

The next day, Kris put the tree under her wing and put two sets of lights on the tree. The set that had not worked was miraculously working again. We were kind of excited to see the tree lit. Nightfall, which lately seems to come just after lunch was taking it's sweet time in arriving.

We don't have enough extension cords to run the chicken coop light and the tree at the same time, so we waited until it was time to unplug the chickens and then we both went outside to enjoy the first annual tree lighting. I pushed the two plugs together and stood back to enjoy the spectacle. "Wow, it's beautiful" I said. It lit up the dooryard with a warm glow. It really was spectacular. I went over to the corral and called the horses over and we all stood in rapt silence.

After a while, Kris and I went inside and pulled chairs up to the window, sat next to the wood stove and put our feet up. I was basking in the Christmas glow. After a few minutes, Kris broke the silence. "There's a hole."
"I don't see any hole, it looks great."
"It looks nice, but there is a hole, I need to fix it."
"A little irregularity gives it character. Things can be too perfect you know."

Yesterday, Kris re-did the lights. Last night we, made hot chocolate to go with the Christmas tree viewing. We lit the lights and came inside, put our feet up by the fire and sipped hot chocolate as we observed our tree. "Looks wonderful," I said.
"There's a hole on the left," she replied.

We sat quietly for a while. "If you squint your eyes, it looks like a dancing bear with a hat. You see it?" I asked.
"Yeah, she's wearing dress."
"I like it. It's festive. Let's leave it like it is, okay?"
"Okay, well, maybe."