When I began lighting trees for Christmas in the lawn surrounding my home, I was a young man. There was a certain excitement about sinuous cords and electricity, star lights in a winter chill. And for the lights, foreign born and cheap, it was their month of glory, or so I liked to imagine. No longer mute, they sang from the trees with their humming electrical hearts.

Yet, I confess, I did not know the trajectory of my passion. What began with three trees expanded to a drapery of lights over the azaleas, to the Osthmantus trees in the backyard, to the large and unknown tree that brushes against the playroom wall, to all the shrubbery and plantings that hugged the back wall. I confess a tiny bit of resentment grew in my heart.

A few years ago, I was at work in mid-November with, of course, the tree lights. I woke them from their hibernation under the eaves of the house where they lay coiled and cabined, untangled them from their long sleep, and juiced them to see if they lived on, lit for another year. Those that didn't, that were either dark or significantly dark, I consigned to hell which, for such tawdry baubles, means the rubbish bin. I show mercy on whom I will show mercy and have not the power to redeem nor repair their darkened souls.

Once the wheat is separated from the chaff, I drug the bin in which they rested down the stairs, or hefted them, depending on my mood, and sat them at the top of the driveway, abuzz in gathering anticipation. I gathered electrical cords, laid the infrastructure in the beds of pine straw, and plotted my work of creation. Using a perhaps six foot orange pole of unknown origin, I began carefully, like an artist at canvas, hoisting the strands and laying them carefully around the tree. And yet, I tire and soon revert to more abstract art, throwing handfuls of lights over the tallish upper branches of the trees, randomly, like the musical compositions of John Cage or the "paintings" of monkeys and elephants. My method is rude, but effective. Viewed from a distance, through squinted eyes, it is an impressionist painting, I think.

Yet back to that tiny bit of resentment. In throwing handfuls of lights a few years ago, I apparently injured my rotator cuff, producing pain and leading to surgery. No more abstract act. No more throwing lights. It's just not the same. I have suffered for my art.

This year I said to my wife, just on the eve of winter, "Maybe we can just not put up the lights this year." And she said, "But the children would be disappointed." Oh yes, the children. For a moment I imagined our laconic cats watching from the windows, noses pressed to glass, dispassionately observing, not a single thought of Christmas lights in their heads or, for that matter, any thought in their noggins. Yet perhaps even such as these desire to look into such things.

But, the children. Their disappointment. About that she is probably right, so I reconsidered. Last Sunday afternoon, after a nap, near twilight, on the eve of dinner, after the consolations of church, we tackled the first tree. Last year she had taken down the lights, which is my least favorite part of the job, separating them by tree, coiling them carefully, and storing them away not under the eaves but in the garage. It is a more appropriate place, and she was good to them, and yet, as you will see, the new lodgings bred some resentment.

All out, we took to the lower tree. She climbed to the top of a teetering ladder, as I comforted myself by the fact that a fall would be into a soft pine straw bed. Or on me. She wrapped an unlit cord around the treetop, a beginning. Then, done, we plugged it in. Nearly one-half the strand was dark. A resentful strand. She looked at me. I looked at her. A small, silent curse -- no, a pre-curse -- passed between our faces. "Don't cuss," I said. But of course she wouldn't. We smiled slight smiles and let go the curse. "Let's jiggle it," I said, a remedy for most mechanical malfunctions, and we did, and yet we failed to revive it. Reprobate, I thought. We ripped it down. I consigned it to, where else, but eternal damnation.

In the end, 90 minutes later, in the dark, we finished one tree. She stood back, smiling. "It looks wonderful, the best ever," she said, unfailingly cheerful. Stepping back to look, I felt a crunch underfoot. Oh, the faulty light string. Sorry, I thought, as I looked down. But I wasn’t. Who started all this anyway? And don’t say Tim Allen.

But, the children. In the end, it will all be worth it, I think, their lit faces basking in the window candles, the buzz of electricity humming in their ears, and the starry cheer of a lit lawn lifting their hearts on a cold and rainy day. In the light of it, even the melancholy brighten. Christmas is coming.