The story behind Light Up My Tree card

Did you ever have Christmas tree lights duty?   You know... where you are the one who wraps that lovely pine in strands of winking electricity?   Where the needle scratches on your hands are forgotten as soon as you see the lovely lines twinkling through the branches?

In my family it's usually me and my dad who have light duty.   It's one of those few traditions that have built up, unspoken, unplanned.   Somehow, as an adult, it's almost always the two of us dragging the tree inside, him setting it up in the base, me holding it straight as he clamps it in, and mom coming in to tell us how it's leaning to the left...

And then it's on to the lights.  First plugging them in to check that they still work, and then I squeeze behind the tree and dad stands in front of it.   We wrap it in strand upon strand of lights, passing them to each other when we can't reach any further around the tree.   Nowadays they're mostly white solids, but I remember as a kid having different sizes and colors and blinkers...   Wow.  It would look like a carnival ride.

But no matter what lights go on, I always treasure that moment when its just bark, needles, and lights.   That moment before we toss on all our wonderful, gaudy ornaments.  It's like seeing the star of a play in their dressing room, in lingerie, face makeup on, but the costume still hanging on the door.

My newest holiday card celebrates that pause in decorating.  That moment right when we Light Up My Tree.