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Tuesday, December 9. 2014

Deep mysteries of Christmas lights


Christians use Christmas lights and Christmas candles to symbolize and celebrate Christ's coming to illuminate a dark, painful, and sinful world.


There are two mysteries to those strands of colored lights which I have never understood:


- No matter how carefully you stow them away, they always come out tangled. Are they self-tangling?


- You stow them away for 11 months untouched, but when you take them out in December, half the strands don't work and you have to run to Home Depot or CVS. Do they have a built-in obsolescence?

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 19:06 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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There is nothing to be done about the phenomena you observe BD.

It is the work of The Gremlins and they infest all storage areas.

I know of no way to eradicate them.

Perhaps others have more info on the subject?
#1 feeblemind on 2014-12-09 19:18 (Reply)
This is a deep cosmic mystery, rivaled only by the question of where do lost umbrellas go?
#2 Jim on 2014-12-09 19:37 (Reply)
The lost umbrellas are 3 aisles West of the colored socks...
#3 Dorf on 2014-12-09 19:50 (Reply)
There is no mystery. It's simple:

The answer to both questions is "Yes."
#4 Phil L. on 2014-12-10 08:48 (Reply)
Where do socks go?
#5 BD on 2014-12-10 10:09 (Reply)
Socks are the larval form of coathangers.
#6 Texan99 on 2014-12-10 11:24 (Reply)
Then where do the coathangers go?

Never mind. Probably the same place all the hot water and clean towels go...
#6.1 James the lesser (Link) on 2014-12-10 13:59 (Reply)
It's the "Law of Cables", and it's not just Christmas lights. From years of work in electronic labs, I know that cables carefully hung up last night will be horribly tangled today. I am convinced that there is some undiscovered law of physics at work here, but I can't figure it out. Where is today's Einstein when you need him?

The "not working" part is easier to understand. The light strings use cheap plating on the metal electrical contacts. A year of corrosion will result in a lot of the connections failing.

I've had good luck with LED strings where all the parts are soldered. No electrical contacts, no corrosion. Of course, if a LED does burn out, you need a new string, but the bulb type are so hard to repair, it almost amounts to the same thing, and LEDs are many times more reliable
#7 GaryS on 2014-12-10 15:12 (Reply)

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