I love Christmas decorations. Everyone loves Christmas decorations. When I drive around at night and look and all the twinkling lights, it kind of makes my heart do a little flip-flop.

Some people, though, must love them more than others. My son is definitely one of these people. According to him, it is impossible to have too many decorations. We will drive by a house that has Snoopy cut-outs alongside Baby Jesus alongside Santa and all eight reindeer, all covered with millions of twinkling lights. One even had a live Santa in the front yard every night with hours posted.

I’m thinking, “That’s a little much.”

He says, “Why can’t OUR yard look like theirs?!”

Last year the new icicle-type lights showed up on a few houses. Of course, he wondered why we couldn’t have those kind of lights, too. I’m wondering, if you buy new lights for your whole house, what do you do with the 8 million old ones? I’m guess the bottom line is that I’m just too cheap to buy new ones.

So one day I sent my teenager to the store for groceries. She came home with a bag full of icicle lights. It was a good day in the life of a small boy.

Of course, we waited until the first norther blew in to begin hanging them. It’s hardly worth hanging them if you’re not miserable doing it. We hung the first strand and stepped back to admire it. It was great, except it was only a few feet long. A little math told us there’s no way we had enough to even do the front of our house.

So the teenager went in search of more lights. I guess everybody else got suckered into this, too, because there are none. Anywhere. At any price. Next year, we’ll go out in September and buy double what we think we need … exactly what the manufacturers had planned. In two or three years, about the time we finally have exactly what we need, they’ll come out with something new that some little boy thinks we can’t live without.

So when you drive by my house and see icicle lights across two-thirds of the front of my house, you’ll know why. Oh, and please notice the sidewalk beautifully lined with lights. Yep, some of the 8 million old ones.