Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

Remember the old peanuts Christmas special and the sad little tree Charlie Brown buys for the Christmas play. This year we can relate a little to those disappointed kids. Christmas trees in the Philippines have come a long way in recent years so our tree is actually very nice looking. Artifical trees are the only option and we were told to buy early to get what we wanted. So back in September Allan and I bought our new Christmas tree. We of course needed new lights since we left our 110V lights back in the US. When we opened our packages of lights we discovered that the cheap lights sold at Wlamart are high quality compared to what we have available here. Some of our strings were so dim that they barely glowed. We had not purchased enough lights to cover the tree so Thanksgiving weekend we attempted to buy a couple more strands of clear lights. Unfortunately (or maybe not) all of the stores seemed to be out of clear lights until we came to one hardware store. They had a more expensive strand still available. We bought 2 and came home to finish decorating the tree. These lights were much better quality and brighter than the others. Everything was fine though until the last few days. It seems the cheap strands are dropping like flies. Every day another stand goes out. It looks like the bulbs are all burned. Tonight we are down to only the 2 more expensive strands. As portions of our tree have slowly gone dark, we can do nothing, but laugh about it. It seems somewhat typical of quality control here. This picture was taken before the bottom strands went dark. I guess the old saying is true --"you get what you pay for" and as my mom says we will have to just "chalk this up to experience". I guess next year we will have to invest in new lights and I can tell you which ones we wont buy. If only Snoopys dog house was here so we could take the lights from it! Merry Christmas!