Christmas tree Catastrophe

We put the tree up last Sunday as usual the weekend of Thanksgiving. But come Monday morning, half the lights were out. Monday after work, after trial and error for over an hour, we decided to take all the decorations down and the lights and start over. New lights and the ornaments where put back on and the tree fell over. Breaking a few and loosing a few branches out of the sockets. So, we started over again. And again it fell over. Now I am about to take the tree out and light it up. We went to Hobby Lobby and Walmart to get either a new tree or at least a new stand since the stand was the main problem. I wasn't very excited about the trees I saw or about spending $200 or more on a nice one so we got a new stand. Came home and found out it would ONLY work for a real tree and not an artificial one. So, stand is going back and the original stand is now 'working' for the tree. I went to bed at 10 after 6 hours of non-stop tree doing on Monday and really couldn't move a muscle any more. Note for next year: if the lights go out, tough ****!!!!