Meet the Nieratkos - What I Learned on Christmas Vacation

So I’ve really been battling depression in regards to this lackluster display of Christmas lights I produced. My family seems to realize I’m not right. Family friends the Germains just stopped by the house and left an inflatable 8' snowman and 6' inflatable bear on my door step to help cheer me up.

I just got back from LA and it seemed like everywhere I went everyone’s Christmas lights were bigger and brighter than mine (I didn’t take any photos… I couldn’t bring myself to do it.). It was a knife in my heart. LA? They have palm trees, not Christmas trees. I should not be outdone by sun-bleached hippies who will soon fall into the earth. It’s just not right. But I know I’m going to be fine and next year will be a better year and that’s not just me repeating what the therapist said. It seems that after I helped out my neighbor, Tony (my guy with the mega-light house) down the road with the super-duper house of lights, I forgot to remember everything I never knew. He taught me so many amazing lessons on lights and I was so in awe of him and his process that I forgot that as he was speaking I was plugging the notes into my iPhone. I just found those notes today. Here’s what I learned: —Spotlights will crush your power bill. The majority of the money spent and energy pulled is from those cheapy $2 spotlights. He suggested I get a 200-watt landscaping transformer and 4-50 watt landscaping lights and use those as accents. They’ll keep my cost down, brighten the lawn better and can actually be used all year round. —My biggest mistake was the strength of the lights. If you look at the lines I created across my lawn with white lights you'll notice they’re rather dim. That’s because I only laid down single strands of lights. Next year what I need to do is take multiple strands and lay them together creating a thicker, brighter line of lights. It’s as if I drew a line across my line with a ballpoint pen instead of a spray-paint can. —I need The Light Pro Gun. This space-age looking pistol not only tests lights but also solders dead flints and fuses. In my garage I have buckets of “dead” light strands (no comparison to the numerous industrial garbage cans and storage bins that he has). Instead of trashing them I need this gun to fix any problem strands that I might have. —Count my lights. Seems everyone serious about Christmas lights knows exactly how many lights they have: 10,000; 20,000; one guy on TV had 180,000! My guy asked how many I had and I had no answer. “A bunch… I never counted.” I felt like such a novice. I showed at that moment just how yellow I am. But next year, I’ll know. I’ll know exactly what I’m working with. And trust me, it’s going to be way more than ever before. —Create a theme. Christmas-light houses might seem willy-nilly to you but behind them there is a method to the madness. When Tony introduced me to his kids and grandkids he told them I owned the house around the corner. They asked which one and I said, “I’m the guy with the old cars. I got the ’60 Deville and ’72 El Camino,” since that’s how people know my house in the neighborhood. They all seemed puzzled and unsure which house. “Big white old Cadillac…?” I’d explain further. Still they had no clue. Then Tony chimed in, “He’s the guy with the candy canes.” “OH!” They all suddenly knew which house was mine. Christmas folks identify homes by their Christmas lights, not old cars. “That’s a great theme you got with the candy canes,” they’d say. I thanked them just then realizing… I had a theme. So, expect more candy canes next year. —Lastly, I need to create my own decorations. Looking around Tony’s lawn I saw some store-bought stuff from nearly every era of Christmas decorations but he mainly had a ton of custom-built stuff. I am strictly off-the-rack, whereas him and everyone who is serious about decorating their house is into custom-tailored. It’s an area I know nothing about and need to learn about. Fast. I met a guy at Tony’s named Dan. Tony is in awe of Dan the way I’m in awe of Tony, so I can only imagine what his house looks like. Dan is strictly on some DIY-shit. He was telling us how he trolls neighborhoods looking for old computers people are throwing away. He picks them up and removes their power supply, then mounts them to a 12-volt battery that powers the custom-mechanical moving decorations he builds. He also suggested going to junkyards and buying car windshield-wiper motors and using those to power my decorations. As Dan and Tony went back and forth with their high-voltage conversation I thought to myself, ‘so this is how I’m gonna go, huh? I’m gonna start playing with electricity and I’m going to electrocute myself.’ (For more stupid go to Chrisnieratko.com)