A Guide To Seasonal Exterior Lighting

1. No matter how many strings of lights you packed away last year, you will need more.

2. (1) is always true because many of the lights that were working when you packed them away last year will not work now.

3. (2) is always true because holiday lights are designed this way: the entire string works the first year. Two-thirds of the string will light the second year. By year three, you might as well just pitch them—they either will not turn on at all, or they will blink on and off.

4. Because it seems a shame to waste the functioning portions of “year three” lights, you will arrange, bunch up, and wrap them around themselves so as to conceal the dud, or unlighted, sections. This is a bad idea, because just when you have completed these gyrations, the entire string of lights will go out, and you will have to unwrap, unbunch, and rearrange.

5. Whether you use brand-new or older lights, they will all stop working within a few hours to a day of when you’ve finished putting them up. You will have to take at least a portion of them down and start again. Guaranteed.

5a. Corollary to (5): even if you chose to hang your lights on a beautiful, mild day, by the time you have to rework the lighting arrangement it will be minus 5 with wind chill. And you will need to take your gloves off while you’re working.

6. “Dad, you taught me everything I know about exterior illumination.”*

My parent’s next-door neighbor, Mr. Jim, often went with a monochromatic lighting scheme (my parents were strictly multicolor). Many evenings, after dark, my Pop would sneak over and change one lightbulb, inserting, say, an orange amid the unbroken line of blue. Mr. Jim would watch out for him, and when he left, would quietly come outside and replace the discordant orange bulb with a blue one. It amused them for years.

*Clark Griswold, in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

7. Outdoor seasonal lights are not optional, despite any inconvenience they may cause.

8. Happy, happy holiday season, and may your lights shine brightly all the year round.

Antique Words

Recently I learned about a web site (www.savethewords.org) that’s devoted to words that are becoming obsolete. It’s sponsored by the Oxford English Dictionary. The setup is great—the words appear in a big collage on the home page, in all different fonts, and when you scroll over them they call out to you in little goofy voices “Pick me! Me! No, me!” When you choose a word, you get its definition and see it used in a sentence.

Then—if it’s the word of your dreams—you can “adopt” it, which means you vow to help bring it back into everyday usage. Here’s the pledge you take:

I hearby promise to use this word, in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible to the very best of my ability.


Some of the words, though uncommon, sound like what they mean. Here are a few:

Boreism: behavior of a boring person

Slimikin: small and slender

Squireiferous: having the character or qualities of a gentleman

Recineration: second time a place or thing is burned down


But some of them are a bit more interesting, mostly because I would never have imagined that there are words that mean such specific, fascinating things. One, weequashing, is defined as “spearing fish or eels by torchlight from canoes.” So cool.

Here are a few more in the who knew? category:

Mulomedic: relating to the medical care of mules

Ptochology: study of beggars and unemployment

Sinapistic: consisting of mustard

Oporopolist: fruit seller

Gutterniform: shaped like a water pitcher


On my first visit I adopted four words, and am already planning how to slip them into conversation. For the first, jussulent, meaning full of broth or soup, I just need to wait for minestrone night. The second, cloakatively, sounds Harry Potterish enough to be fun, and it’s a synonym for “superficially” so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a place for it.

And here are my final two words, two words I could not allow to be lost, the ones that make my heart go pitter-patter:

Isangelous: equivalent to the angels

and

Pregnatress: female power that generates or gives birth to something

How to use them? I’m not sure yet. Something about the holiday season, surely, some happening or feeling of joy or gratitude or blessedness should seem isangelous.

And pregnatress? Hmmm. Such a compelling word shouldn’t be wasted.

Suggestions?