The Agony And The Ecstasy Of The Christmas Arch

12/25/2024

Books by Patti Liszkay available on Amazon:
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"   http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
   "Hail Mary"    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
"Tropical Depression"       https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY

The Agony And The Ecstasy Of The Christmas Arch

It had been two years since my hubby Tom and I last erected our Christmas arch over the sidewalk between our yard and the tree lawn.
I had gotten the idea of putting up a Christmas arch back in 2021 from an arch I spotted a couple of neighborhoods over,

...whose creator was kind enough to share with me his design and construction details so that we could build a variation of his on our block, which, with the help of our son Tommy and daughter Theresa, we did (see post from 12/15/2021, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/my-christmas-arch),

...and subsequently added to it a ball of mistletoe, turning it into a kissing arch.

(The idea of adding the mistletoe was in fact suggested to me by my friend Jan, who, so suddenly, so sadly, left this world for what lies beyond just the week before Christmas. (See post from 12/17/2024, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/good-bye-dear-friend).

The Christmas Kissing Arch was a grand success and greatly enjoyed by our neighbors and other passersby, and so we constructed it again the following year, but didn't the year after, since at that time I was down with COVID.
This year, however, we were ready to put up the arch again. And so on Saturday, December 7, we once more gathered our arch construction crew, Tommy and Theresa, here fueling up before the job,

...along with a friend of Theresa's who showed up later to help and who was a great asset to the project.
After lunch we got to work, and were soon enough reminded of what we'd forgotten: That putting up the frame is a walk in the park,

...but getting the lights up is a headache and a half. In times past, and this time as well, we wrapped the lights around the ribs of the frame and secured them with zip ties. The problem has always arisen from trying to figure out at where and how to connect the strands.

It's kind of a mathematical conundrum that takes hours to solve and effectuate.
However, after the four of us had worked all afternoon and into the evening we finally got the arch together, complete with the kissing ball (except for a few candy canes that we simply couldn't seem to configure in but decided to maybe come back to later).

The day after we got the arch up, Sunday, December 8, Tom and I left for Chicago for a few days (See post from 12/23/2024, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/seeing-the-chicago-christmas-sights-mostly-on-foot). When we arrived home on Thursday, December 12, we saw to our horror that half of the arch lights were out, but not in any discernable pattern. We spent a dejected moment pow-wowing over whether, considering how much time and effort we'd put into it, we should live with a randomly half-lit Christmas arch.
We came to a pretty quick conclusion that a half-lit arch was a half-a**ed arch, and the light situation would have to be rectified, Herculean task that this might be.
And, as it turned out, was. Tom went out the following morning and began fiddling with the light strands. Three hours later he returned to the house a beaten man. He could not, for the life of him, figure out which were the bad strands or the rogue connections. From which again rose the dilemma: leave up the sorry-looking arch or put it and us out of its and our misery.
We were on the verge of choosing the latter option when I was suddenly hit with a bolt of inspiration. I remembered the towering arch we'd seen at the Chicago Botanic Garden light show the week before, and how I'd noted that the lights on this arch were draped over the top rib, and what a nice effect was created by the draping.

I suggested that we take down all the lights from our arch, test each strand, then try draping each strand over the top rib rather than wrapping the strands around all the ribs. And so we each pulled in a deep breath, girded out figurative loins, and decided to give this idea a last-ditch try.

We got to work, Tom, Theresa and I, snipping the zip ties then taking down and testing each light strand.

All that snipping, unwinding and testing took the rest of the day.
The following day we set to draping the lights, securing them to the ribs and also to the candy canes - which I had to run out to Home Depot and buy more of - for stability, and which also offered us more connecting plugs.