Some people dream of a white Christmas. Some dream of sugar plums. I dream of a Christmas covered in brightly lit up houses, trees and shelves.

Like any dream, mine does not come true without a little tears, frustration and exhaustion.

The annual struggle of Katelyn verses lights begins with my tree. Standing 6 feet tall, my tree looks as if it escaped from Whoville in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” as it sits in the corner glowing blue, yellow, pink, green and purple against the fake, white, but slightly yellow pine needles.

For convenience while storing after Christmas, this tree comes in three pieces. While spreading the branches on the first, I am overflowing with Christmas spirit. To match the style of my tree, I play “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” in the background. Moving about the piles of ornaments and tree parts, I find the next piece to the tree, the biggest piece, the dreaded middle section. The mission always seems so simple in my mind: find the plug from the bottom and middle section, and connect them. Every year I tell myself, “This is easy. I can find them in 30 seconds.” So far, the middle section has diminished my plug-finding self-esteem levels down to something which might as well be considered nonexistent. After several minutes of meticulous searching, I find a plug, only to lose it while looking for the other.

Eventually, I am able to use stealth, some ninja moves and agility to bring two-thirds of my Christmas tree out of the darkness. From across my room, the top piece taunts me. The added struggle with this chunk of needles is the height difference with the tree gaining the advantage. My Christmas spirit dims duller than the Grinch at the beginning of the movie.

I am ready to give up and be content with an unfinished tree and possibly start a new Pinterest trend, but my stubborn attitude outweighs my feelings of content from being shown up by some well-hidden plugs. I roll up my sleeves and turn up the volume of my Christmas movie. Slowly, but surely, I work my way through the highest, smallest and thickest, piece. The branches split and spread until, in one shining, glorious moment, I find it. The final plug seems to glow through the faded branches of my tree, and I swear I can hear angels singing “hallelujah.”

I run to flick off the lights and carefully tread back to the corner where my tree stands to find the last plug, the easiest to locate since it will plug into the wall outlet and is already on the floor. The speed of light seems slow for this moments as the candy colored lights send rays of Christmas joy to every corner of my room. This tree will not be the end of my Christmas light struggles, but the magical feeling of lighting up my first Christmas tree of the season makes me not care.