Oh sure, we all know that you can size up a person pretty
quickly by the way they dress, kind of car they drive, and the
company they keep. But, frankly, I think you never really know a
person until you see what kind of outdoor holiday decorations they
have. I mean, it happens every year.
Oh sure, we all know that you can size up a person pretty quickly by the way they dress, kind of car they drive, and the company they keep. But, frankly, I think you never really know a person until you see what kind of outdoor holiday decorations they have. I mean, it happens every year. Come December, people who don’t so much as display a lawn ornament suddenly cover their entire yard with nativity scenes and pinwheel angels and jumbo plastic candy and all that. It’s amazing, really.
Take our neighbors, for example, a nice, quiet conservative couple who won’t even leave their car parked on the driveway over night. As of yesterday, they are the proud owners of five movable reindeer, a light-up tree, a sleigh and a 10-foot inflatable snowman. Not that anything is wrong with this, mind you. I’m all for showing holiday spirit and all that. But for as long as I’ve known them, there was nothing, NOTHING about them that suggested something like this was coming.
But, really, I can see how this could happen. Christmas decorations, much like commercial jingles and, well, chicken pox, are contagious.
Take our neighbors down the street. One year they bought a lovely outdoor Christmas tree with lights for their front yard. A few days later, eight wooden reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh appeared in front of the house next door. Then, shortly after that, a six-foot, fiber optic Frosty the Snowman showed up a few houses down, followed by a group of electronically animated elves singing Jingle Bells in yard of the house across the street.
Coincidence? I think not.
Of course, one of the perks of holiday decorations is that you have an excuse to drive around commenting on other people’s yards. But sometimes this can be depressing. Not because of the cold, mind you, but because by a cruel twist of fate some of the yards, the very same yards you’ve snubbed all year long suddenly look like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting while yours has only a shoddy display of a tree made from a stack of aluminum cans.
Another interesting thing about Christmas decorations, besides their obvious festive appeal, is that they can’t help but explain a great deal about the people who have them. I mean, you can tell who, exactly, is handy with a scroll saw and who spends their weekend roaming craft fairs. Or which family is deeply religious, and which is more of the gingerbread man type.
In fact, there are a lot of houses in the neighborhood that we refer to by their Christmas decorations all year round. I mean, even in midsummer, the house around the corner is known as “the house with the blue icicle lights.” The one across from the park is where the “family who has a thing for ice-skating penguins” lives.
And what about our house? Well, we put up our traditional Christmas display: lights-which-are-still-up-from-last-year. I’m not quite sure what this says about us. And, frankly I don’t want to know.
However, this year my husband’s added three handcrafted wooden reindeer. Of course, he claims it has nothing to do with our neighbor’s elaborate display because “competing with friends over yard decorations is just plain silly.”
Meanwhile, when we came home today our neighbors had added a dozen plastic candy canes and a couple of polar bears.
Coincidence? Well, maybe.
But I’m not too worried about it. Except, that is, for the fact my husband just headed outside to measure our lawn for a full-sized Santa’s workshop.
I hope that January gets here soon.
