My wife likes Christmas lights across the top of our house. I do, too.

That means it’s once again the annual struggle to find something – anything – that will work.

Call it the curse of the flat roof.

We have what’s called a French drain system on our roof. That means the gutter is internal; there’s no metal trough that runs along the fascia board.

That also means there’s no place to hook/clip/tie a string of lights. Believe me, I’ve tried. All I’ve got are boxes of lights to show for my failed attempts.

In the past I’ve tried stretching strings of mini-lights along the fascia. But they just sag. My wife doesn’t have to step too far outside the front door to give a thumbs down.

A couple of years ago I switched to C9 bulbs when I discovered they had a little clip on the side. Hey, I thought, this clip will slide up inside the flashing, giving me a perfectly straight line of bulbs.

That worked just fine except that the plastic clips wouldn’t always fit under the flashing edge. Worse, the clips, being plastic, would break off. The result was more sagging bulbs. One year, mid-way into the Christmas lighting season, I resorted to using duct tape and nails to straighten out sagging bulbs.

Have I mentioned that all of this usually happens in the midst of a cold winter rain?

Of course, with conventional incandescent bulbs, I can only connect two sets together. That means I also must make a trip to the flat – but slippery in the winter – roof to lay out extension cords. Did I mention that it rains in the winter around here?

It’s gotten so bad that this summer, when we were having some work done on our roof, I considered spending an additional $2,500 to have exterior gutters put on the house. $2,500!!!! Am I crazy? Well, I’m getting that way.

This year, in the spirit of saving the planet, I bought LED bulbs. Wow, I thought, you can string 30 or 40 sets together. No more crawling around on the roof.

When I took the lights out of the box, I discovered that they didn’t have clips, but since they were smaller and I figured a couple hundred push-pins would be enough to anchor all the lights. Unfortunately, these LED lights had twisted wires, which not only don’t straighten out but also end up pointing the bulbs in every conceivable direction.

My wife was even faster with her thumb.

In desperation, I went back to the store (I think I’m single-handedly keeping Lowe’s profitable along with helping million of workers in China stay gainfully employed) bought some more C9 bulbs with the plastic clips. They would supplement unused C9 strings I still had from previous failed lighting attempts. Yes, they still had plastic clips, but I figured if they just last this year I could redouble my efforts at a solution next year.

Did you know that different manufacturers put male/female plugs on different ends of the string? The result is that while half my light sets have clips facing the flashing, the other half face the street and, of course, means they won’t attach to the flashing.

I won’t say I’ve given up on the project, but more and more I’m remembering a old Seinfeld episode where George Costanza tells of his father’s effort to de-commercialize Christmas.

“Festivus” anyone?

Craig Groshart is editor of the Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter. He can be reached at cgroshart@issaquah-reporter.com or 425-453-4233.