Abby and I put up the Christmas tree and some of the decorations today. The tree itself is an artificial Brentwood Spruce of Wal Mart lineage, and came pre-lit. Last year, however, the strings of lights on it began to fail, and when I plugged it in today, only about a quarter of them worked. I decided to remove the “pre-lit” lights and put LED lights in their place. I discovered that the only practical way to do this was to cut the existing lights to pieces with my Stanley steel nipper, to make way for the new lights. I must have spent an hour under that tree, trimming off unused wire and lights, redefining the term “trimming the tree.”