Decking the Halls by Peter McKay on Creators.com

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Decking the Halls

This past week we officially became the last people in our neighborhood to put up Christmas decorations. Every year it's a game of chicken. We try to put them off until the last possible minute, but not so late that we're the absolute last house. This year, we lost.

Each year we not only decorate a tree inside, but we try to do something outside, as well. We don't outline our house in colored lights or buy big, blowup snow globes, but we try to fix up our front door. For years, we'd done an array of fruit in the palladium window over the door — with a pineapple in the middle and lemons and apples fanning out, all nailed to a fan-shaped board. It was very colonial, but it was also very messy. When we got a warm spell, the fruit would start to rot and drip, making the whole house smell like Jolly Ranchers.

About five years ago, we started buying pine roping and outlining the archway and our door with a single strand of pine boughs interspersed with little white lights. It was tasteful, kind of festive, and best of all, different from what everybody else was doing.

Then one year later, we noticed that someone else in our neighborhood had done the exact same thing. We were a little perturbed, but then the next year, two houses had the "McKay" treatment around their doors. Then the next year, three houses had it. I'm all about the Christmas spirit, using the season to act just a little bit … better than you usually do. But these people were ripping us off!

I know I'm being a little sensitive; you can't copyright the idea of surrounding your door and archway with pine boughs mixed with white lights. If you could, some folks around here would be getting certified mail from my lawyer.

But last Sunday, when we counted five houses all with identical doors — and our house looking like it had hosted a fairly recent foreclosure or maybe a murder — we decided to pull out our decorations. As I pawed through a storage room full of bulbs, little festive porcelain holiday houses and, for some reason, six Christmas tree stands, I started to get this dim memory of someone (me) saying last year, "You know what? These lights are so old that I'm just going to throw out the tree with the lights still attached!"

That's when we discovered the "Great Little White Light" shortage of December 2009.

It seems that American consumers, spurred on by rebate promotions, rushed into home stores and department stores to trade in their old-fashioned lights for new "LED" lights, which last longer and use far less energy. In the process, they ransacked the shelves.

At the first home store we entered, we found a completely decimated lights department. A store clerk just shook her hand when we asked what happened. The second store had a clerk at the door, shaking his head and informing disgruntled shoppers that they were too late for lights. At the third home store, my wife stopped me in the parking lot and reminded me that we probably weren't going to find any lights here either, and that I shouldn't be a jerk about it. I protested that I had no idea what she meant, but let's face it, I did. We didn't even have to get out the car, though, because we noticed a sign in the window that said "NO CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!"

Hours later with the gas tank and my patience nearing "empty," my wife started calling around from her cell phone. On the fifth call, she located a home store with exactly two coils of pine roping and two sets of white lights left on the shelf. I barreled down the highway like I was delivering a kidney to a transplant patient.

The next morning, as I was up on the stepladder wiring pine boughs and white (LED!) lights around my front door, I glanced over my shoulder. One of the neighbors was passing by on his way to work, and I noticed he'd slowed a bit and was starting to wave. He stared at our front door, shook his head and then sped up. I almost fell off the ladder. It was one of the most recent adopters of the McKay treatment. And from the look on his face, he obviously thought I was ripping HIM off!

I stood on my front porch, grinding my teeth.

"WE did this first!" I called out to his receding taillights. "Merry Christmas, you big COPYCAT!"

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