Lights Of Christmas Past

Day 74: It's been over half a century since these lights were lit. The wiring for them is long gone, and the bases don't fit any modern socket. The paint is scratched and peeling, and I'm not even certain that some of them aren't burned out, but they are memorabilia from my childhood and I hang onto them for no reason except simple, silly nostalgia.

The bubble lights had their own tree, and when the white paper (yes, paper!) needles yellowed with age, my mother tried to salvage it with a can of flocking spray with disastrous results. I retrieved the poor thing from the trash heap, stripped it of the mess and stored the metal frame until such time as I could re-wire it and re-cover it with artificial greens. The modern bubble lights it holds today are larger by half than the old ones shown here.

I was surprised to find among the lights two plastic snowflakes to add to the seven others I've used on my tree every year of my adult life. How they came to be separated from their fellows is anyone's guess. As I recall, the set originally held ten, and I remember clearly breaking the hanging hook off one of them while I was still very young.

Functional or not, I'm sure these antiques have some worth as collectors' items, but it could not possibly match their sentimental value, and the memories of old-fashioned Christmases Past.