“Oh, no!”, my friend exclaimed as we walked into his apartment.

He was looking at his Christmas Tree which stands tall behind the bay window overlooking his Back Bay, Boston street. It’s quite beautiful when viewed from the sidewalk as well as from inside his apartment.

“The lights were working last night and when I left this morning. Now there’s a half-strand gone dark.”

He and his wife absolutely LOVE the Christmas season with all of its traditional accoutrements foremost among which is “the tree” and, critical to the tree, the lights. While, in past years, they have added dozens of ornaments to the tree, their more recent practice has been “lights only”.

“Each year,” he said, “when we put up the tree, we hold the faintest hope that all of the bulbs on the tree will light when we plug them in.” He paused and pursed his lips. “They never do.”

He walked over to the tree, looked up at the dark spot, and pulled at the half-lit light strand. “It’s a big tree and there are several strands of lights that connect – a network. This year, when we plugged everything in, three half-strands of light failed. Pain in the ***.”

Since they prefer older-style incandescent white bulbs to the bright-white LED bulbs and since they never waste anything that can be fixed, his wife has invested hours of time through the last two weeks, removing and testing bulbs and fuses in an effort to re-illuminate the darkened strands.

“She’s had it “fully lit” three times but, every day, there’s a half-strand dark – bulbs to replace or fuses to swap. I swear that, if we didn’t dedicate time to it, the whole tree would go dark in a week.”

Nick Miller trains bankers to attract and expand relationships with businesses. More profitable relationships, faster. He is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.