Don Klipstein ) writes:

3. Get LED strings. Fair sources are Target and Boscovs, last year I saw
good choices in the Brookstone online catalog. I saw a "basic" model at
Walgreens, but this year none at CVS, Rite Aid nor Eckerd.

Do they not make old style Christmas lights where there are sockets
to screw in bulbs? You can still get bulbs for them.

I wouldn't know, since we're still using Christmas lights from
at least forty years ago, though they did replace an older set
that had the bulbs in series.

It sounds like the issue isn't that the bulbs are in series, that's merely
a slow process to find the dead bulb, but that they are no longer socketed.

That would make them far more throwaway than the old style Christmas
lights. On the other hand, from the flyers I see one can get them pretty
cheap, so maybe nowadays people toss out the Christmas tree with the lights
still on it.