December 07, 2004

• Our neighbor put up a life-size glowing angel which falls right in the uncanny valley. The rest of her design is quite charming, but this is the angel of nightmares. A different neighbor with a privacy fence arranges their Mary and Joseph statues in the only spot which can be seen from the road. The result is that poor Mary and Joseph appear trapped behind a chain link fence, desperate to escape from a cruel, cold yard. Of course, one could retaliate. (NSFW)
• Trick question, right? And the answer's "Canadians"?
• Last year my parents attached an evil glowing Santa head to their chimney. Not annoying, just creepy.
• When I was growing up the street through the woods and perpendicular to mine was one of those streets where everyhouse had wooden cutouts and crazy amounts of lights. Each year they would petition to have the street renamed Christmas Lane (it never happened). The worst part was one house set up a speaker system and blasted Christmas favorites including that god awful, goosebump causing version of "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth". I could hear that song playing through the woods and a street away in my bedroom - that is torture my friends, pure torture.
• A dozen blocks from my place, there's a house with a narrow door, the kind with a steel bars' gate and a short hallway in front of the actual door. Residents put a lifesized Santa in the hallway. Big, lighted from inside, rocking back and forth, with a digitized, barely-christmas-sounding muzak emanating from its entrails. Inside that narrow space, behind those metal bars, it reminds me of a prison inmate. Or The Gimp...
• An example I've observed and someone documents here.
• rustcellar- that page made my eyes hurt. Maybe some sort of terrible design callout :)
• Ah, well, as long as it doesn't inconvenience you (unlike blasting music) why is it such a big deal? They'll be up for a month or so, and they'll go away till next year. I used to have great fun finding and applauding the most overly-elaborate displays around. A lot more fun than some here are having trashing them. You really have to appreciate the spirit of folks who will go the that expense to celebrate something they love. And, if you have kids, they'll really enjoy even the the most un-artistic displays. My 36 year old daughter still wishes we'd go out and look at Christmas decorations. I've never done the outside display, but I cherish Christmas traditions. Ornaments that I've collected for more than 30 years - it's a kind of insane collection, but we love the tree (and thank it) with the the cut-out figures that my daughter did in kindergarten, and the marshmallow house and the hobby horse with candy sprinkles, and the various angels, and birds.... I don't believe in the Christmas story, but I do love the holiday. So, if I invited you to my house for Christmans eve, would you sit in a corner and snark at my tree? And, I really think that the folks with displays are inviting you into their love of the season. So. Let me ask you - how do you celebrate Christmas?
• I love elaborate lights displays, too. My mom and sister and I drive around every year searching for the most "Griswaldian" (From Christmas Vacation) display. It's great fun.
• Er, sorry, that's Christmas Vacation
• We have a place close by called 'Candycane Lane' which is a kind-of Cul de Sac where all the neighbor's houses are decorated with these stovepipe candycanes as the center-piece and assorted Christmas-y shtuff. Apparently it was started some decades back by a Korean-American immigrant who convinced all the neighbors to join in with him. Then there were agreements among the neighbors that whomever left they would have to leave the stovepipe candy-cane behind for the new owners to put up every year. Apparently after awhile he became somewhat fascistic about it and eventually was forced out of the neighborhood. The neighbors still carry on with the tradition, except it's a lot less overbearing. Now you know the dark and dirty secret of 'CandyCane Lane'. People come from all over Puget Sound to check this thing out. Funny. Here's a virtual tour"
  
• Once upon a time in my second hometown, some friends and I were exchanging Christmas/birthday gifts in my room. (My folks had purchased a small house on a street that was, for lack of a better term, "ghetto" - i.e., dessicated housing, proximity to train tracks, etc.) After a few gifts were unwrapped and quips exchanged, we noticed a bright light oustide. It was the trademark high-powered search beam on the side of an ambulance. One of my neighbors, a 63-year old man, had shot his "girlfriend" (read: unfortunate 23-year old crack-cocaine addict) in the chest numerous times with a rifle because she refused to get out of his pickup truck. Somehow, my friends and I didn't hear a single shot fired. Suffice it to say that many of the people living on that street wandered down from their slumber to see the bullet-hole riddled body, splayed quite cinematically in said pickup truck, and offer their $.02 as to what had transpired, and why. The most absurd thing (though not quite ironic) was that my family had experienced a similar scenario in my first hometown not three months before, when a psychopathic, estranged husband decided to murder his wife and kidnap their children. For those monkeys who exalt in the horrendously exploitative details that are presented in shows like City Confidential (and who doesn't?), he clobbered his wife's brains out with a hammer in front of their children, then absconded with them. Thankfully, he was captured four hours later and the kids were turned over to social services (send up a meta-monkey banana-prayer for those kids). In retrospect, though I've begun several pieces of fiction that incorporate components of these true stories, I haven't sat down and seriously contemplated the psychic reverberations of those experiences. (And when I keystroke the term "psychic reverberations," what I mean to say is, "psychological impact.")
• why is it such a big deal? I think the reason that some here are making fun of the overabundance of Christmas paraphernalia is because those who fervently decide that boosting their electric company's stock have deep-rooted feelings of resentment due to candy-deprivation in childhood which resulted in-- AAAAAAAAACK! Ah, shit. Ferget it. Hell yes, I'd make fun of your Christmas tree. Woo. I feel 40% better. Sorry, I'm experiencing sneeriness this evening. I actually do like Christmas.
• I like christmas lights.
• I live in a dorm with paper-thin walls, so I can hear every last sniffle my neighbors make. Thank god they jazzercise to late-80s whitney houston at 3 a.m. when I'm trying to study. I actually have a "Wall of Idle Threats" in my room, where I compose idle death threats or complaints on post it notes and am just amassing a cathartic masterpiece. This is an open letter that went on my wall a while ago.
• NIT - so tell us what you do like about Christmas, when you're feeling better. And, you'd really love my tree, I know you would. You know you would, if you could just admit it. Especially if we had presents for you under it to open on Christmas eve, and Santa brought you others to find on Christmas day, even though you're above the age of believing in Santa. And, the tree lights would make you happy (we accidently had a disco treee one year with blinking lights, but it was way cool.) The lights would cast muted colors onto the walls and ceiling, while we talked about our lives, and what we love to read, or what our plans were, and we'd be warm and comfortable and friends. If you were sleeping on the couch in the living room, you might even keep the Christmas tree lights on to go to sleep to, and you'd have the best bed in the house. On Christmas day we'd play the video games and others we got as presents, while waiting for a dinner that was based on the traditional fixings, but with interesting changes. After dinner, we'd send everyone off with hugs and good wishes, and then say, "who was that guy who sneered at our tree? Don't think we'll invite him back next year."
• My friend's parents hosted the neighborhood Christmas party this year, and apparently one of their neighbors (a 50-year-old woman!!!) got absolutely wasted, stumbled around making people uncomfortable for some time, threw up in the sink in their laundry room and prompty left without letting anyone know. They didn't figure out until the next afternoon, when the smell started wafting out into the living room. Loverly,ain't it?
• ALL HOUSES MUST LOOK THE SAME!!!! NO LIGHTS | SAME BROWN PAINT | LAWN 1" HEIGHT
• When you look at my mom's big plastic Santa Claus from behind, it looks like he's taking a whiz. OK, that's more awesome than irritating. A couple of years ago, inflatable lawn Santas became popular around here. As I was riding the bus, we passed a few houses where the Santas had deflated. It looked like they had dead Santas in their yards.
• path, despite my 17 years of working in retail, I still (amazingly) love everything about Christmas. But I’m not too fond of some of those outrageous light displays because I don’t believe Christmas is about competing, charging admission, or keeping your neighbors awake with cars rolling up and down the street every night. Also, I’m very fond of kitsch. Every year my goal is to get the ugliest or oddest ornaments possible (here’s this year’s selection). And I can’t sleep with the lights on, so I’ll sack out under the dining room table, if you don’t mind.
• I like Christmas lights. Christmas noise is an entirely different issue, as goes for lights that keep your neighbours up at night because they are so bright. If the visual/aural display can reach your neighbours, it is too much. It's just about respecting the peace - and Christmas should be about quiet and peace as well. pippa feather: You should just slip that letter under their door. Maybe they will get the message, maybe they will just be confused. Either way, the world will be a better place.
• Not exactly answering the question, but: My father died two days before Christmas my junior year of college. It was a heart attack, we had no warning (in fact, I had been at dinner with him the night before), and he was dead within an hour. We buried him on Boxing Day in a sparsely-attended service; most of his friends and ours were away for the holidays. This was almost half a lifetime ago for me, but it still influences my feelings about Christmas and the holiday season. I joke about being a grinch, but the truth of the matter is that I find the holidays overwhelming and I need a lot of down time because of the complex feelings they evoke. I don't begrudge other people their celebrations, but people who insist on "getting [me] into the Christmas spirit" infuriate me. Most folks are pretty understanding, but I've run into a few who take it as a personal affront that I'm not 150% actively happy/jolly in their presence, even after I explain that the holiday cheer recalls that sadness for me. While I'm sorry my complex emotions ruin their holiday, I can't turn them off. I know I can't be the only person with this problem, but it's certainly the most annoying thing about Christmas and neighbors/cow orkers/friends/family for me.
• There's a local bigwig here named Jennings Osborn who used to put up a HUGE Christmas light display around his house. It was like someone carpet-bombed his whole lot with strands of colored lights. Tens of thousands of the damn things. Someone told me that pilots flying into Little Rock from the west during the Christmas season used to look for his house so they'd know when they hit the west edge of the city. His neighbors complained about the light and the horrendous traffic, so he bought both of the next-door houses, hoping that would fix it. It didn't. He wound up fighting it (and, surprisingly, losing) all the way to the state Supreme Court. He wound up donating the lights to Disney World.
• MCT, you forgot to mention Mr. Osbourne's current year-round light display: two-story tall American Flags/Eagles in lights with "GOD BLESS PRESIDENT BUSH" flashing night after night, every year. Bah, humbug.
• immlass, one of my good friends lost his mum right before Christmas a few years ago. If he's going to be alone over the holidays, we drop off a batch of tikka masala or a lasagna or a similarly un-Christmasy dish. Sometimes he wants company, sometimes he doesn't. We don't push it. Don't feel bad about "ruining" the holiday of blundering twits who should know better. They probably whine if they can't have the perfect Martha Stewart pseudo-Victorian Christmas. They deserve a swift kick with a mistletoe boot. :) Full disclosure: my favorite holiday tradition is getting together with friends to watch A Hard Day's Night and drink mulled wine.
• path, I'm so glad that you mentioned the joy of sleeping in the living room with the xmas tree. it's one of my favorite parts of the holiday. hugs to those who lost family around the holidays and have additional stress at an already-rough time of year. Austin has a street that does the whole light display thing... it's really nice to walk down and see all kinds of funky displays like Ken and Barbie skiing down a bush, mannequins reenacting a bad office xmas party (complete with mannequin photocopying its butt), etc.
• immlass, I am the same way with New Year's, for the same reason.
• One of the happiest, most pleasant memories from holiday season I have, is laying on my back down on the carpet in my parent's living room, looking up to the tree, brimming with lights and spheres. Nowadays, I go outside the city for the Xmas-New Year's week, to someplace warm. Humbug, yeah.
• immlass, you are so not alone in the way you feel during the holidays.
• Thanks, guys. I appreciate the monkey support, knowing that I'm not alone (as little as I like to think other people feel this way), and hugs. Bless you in particular, shinything, because you're a really good friend. Your pal is lucky to have you.