November 22, 2005

"Houseblingers" is a site that celebrates the people who overdecorate their homes for the holidays. In my family, we called these houses Griswoldian after the movie.

Apparently, "Griswold houses" are pretty popular. You can even compete to be named the best Griswold house in the Fargo area. Get your Christmas lights out, folks, it's that time of year!

posted by meredithea 19 years ago
  • Yeah, they have the same thing here, even. Drive the kiddies round looking at all the lights. Hot as buggery in the middle of summer with santas and reindeer on the freakin roofs.
  • That was our family tradition - drive around looking for the official Griswold House of the year. Where my parents live now, there's only one, but they're truly remarkable because they have 1/10th of the yard but 100 times the decorations of everyone else. Also they are next door to a store called Guns & Things. I'm currently in negotiations with my roommate over our own decor (I'm the holiday nut), and losing. Bah.
  • Is this guy included?
  • The hip pocket nerve connected to my electricity bill has just shorted out!
  • In #2's home town, there was this one American family. Every year the rest of the town would flock to the tiny cul-de-sac on which they lived, because it literally lit up the sky with all the twinkly decorations in the windows, on the roof, on the lawn. Every year a few more houses would join in, and now you can't tell which house belongs to the American family any more. Mike reckons they don't even do it any more. Probably can't compete.
  • A local bigwig/philanthropist named Jennings Osborne created quite the Little Rock legend with his Christmas Lights, which landed him in a lawsuit filed by annoyed neighbors over the Clark W. Griswold-esque spectacle that he'd created in his front yard, blinding everyone within a block and turning Cantrell Road, a major thoroughfare, into a parking lot full of rubberneckers. He appealed the case all the way to the US Supreme Court, but to no avail. Now his famous lights are here and scattered throughout the state. I've heard that pilots flying into Little Rock from the west during the Christmas season used his house as a landmark at night so they'd know when they hit roughly the western edge of the city. I'm actually a bit surprised that he lost. His daughter got married last year, and Jimmy Carter himself attended. That kind of power's hard to fight.
  • I would have thought Carter jinxed it.
  • Poor old Jimmy. Outthunk by Bush snr, drunken brother, saw UFOs, wacky Jezoid, inflation, attacked by a rabbit.. he really was a loser. But shit, now you'd have him back in a bloody instant.
  • I'd give my left testicle, good sir. Say what you will about his leadership abilities, he was and is a good man. Not a snark, not intended a cheap shot at all, but I wish to God I could say that about my president these days. And I'd dispute the "wacky Jezoid" depiction these days. Back then, maybe, but lately he seems to take more of a moderated "many roads to Rome" approach to theology.
  • I likes me some Jimmy Carter. My mom, sister and I also go around looking at the lights every Christmas. We turn the radio to the station that plays all Christmas carols, sing along in the most obnoxious voice we can muster, and get super hopped up on Dr. Pepper. Good times.
  • Anyway, it looks like most of the houses are in Essex. Nuff said.
  • It interested me that the site was British. I always assumed that over-the-top Christmas displays were an American thing :)
  • "It interested me that the site was British. I always assumed that over-the-top Christmas displays were an American thing :)" By American standards, those house aren't over the top, some of them are downright subdued.
  • Ya, this is nutin'. If the power meter isn't maxed to smokin' the lights aren't bright enough.
  • meredithea: yes that surprised me as well. I always thought the British were the garden gnome type. Now that's a bling I could get into. Viva la pink flamingo! Really, I think Americans are the traditional over-the-toppers on Christmas decos. Between that and the escalating Halloween haunted house wars, one would think we spent most of our time (and energy budget) planning and executing monstrous assaults on the senses.
  • .... come to think of it, could I get some of that phosphorous stuff for my big, bright, awesome and shocking snow finale?
  • BEST. LITES. EVER!!! (windows media)
  • grover96: Wow!
  • Nice!! That's got to be the coolest Christmas house evar!!
  • Reeeeeally hope there are no epileptics on that street.