Yes, Christmas specialty lights...but how many?

Many of our traditions unfortunately died with my father more than 20 years ago. One that didn't is the annual contest to count the number of lights on the Christmas tree.

When I was a kid, my father would put the lights on the tree (keeping track of the total on a small slip of paper) and my mother would finish decorating with the ornaments and garland.

The pictures here were taken from my tree. As you can see, the lights aren't your ordinary plain bulbs. No way!!! It's part of the tradition at my parent's house (mine too) to have only 'specialty' lights on the tree. My childhood included lights that were shaped like antique cars, gift boxes, icicles, lanterns, etc. I must admit, the unique shapes of the lights did add a different dimension to the job of counting the lights as it's easy to mistake a light for an ornament.

But I digress...

Starting on Christmas Eve and continuing through Christmas dinner, anyone and everyone could place their name and their guess on a tiny slip of paper, fold it up, and place it on the fireplace mantel.

After Christmas dinner, when everyone was sitting around the table drinking coffee and nibbling on one of at least five dessert options, my father would get up from the table and head to the fireplace. He'd flick his cigarette into the fireplace and collect all the scraps of paper from among the flock of porcelain angels my mother used to decorate the mantel.

My dad would read each name and number and, after the appropriate amount of ridicule was heaped on those whose guesses were WILDLY off the mark, he'd place each scrap in order on the tablecloth.

After taking out money for each of the third-, second-, and first-place guesses, my father would reach into his wallet for the magic number.

We all considered it a 'magic' number because even if it seemed that the strings of lights didn't change much (if at all) from year to year, the number DEFINITELY changed. I know this for a fact because at some point during my teen years, I got sick of NEVER even placing in the top three! and cheated. Yep, I kept my dad's list from the prior year. Still....NOTHING!

I never won.

Until this year.