posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cathyr19355 at 08:53pm on 17/12/2006
cathyr19355 at 08:53pm on 17/12/2006Those of you who have seen the animated Christmas special, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" will recall that in it, Snoopy enters a Christmas decorating contest. His doghouse, which is a solid, chaotic mass of decorations and lights, wins first prize, to Charlie Brown's disgust.
Here in Malvern, most people decorate their homes for Christmas, and a substantial minority do so with Christmas lights. Most of these displays are fairly modest and/or tasteful.
Tonight, however, I was taking a walk through town and I saw a home that looked like a Christmas theme park. The actual lights were tasteful enough--simple white lights decorating the wooden fence around the front part of the property, with an archway of light that did this kind of moving light "ripple" effect.
But most of the large front yard was filled with huge, inflatable, internally lighted figures exemplifying the worst excesses of secular, commercial Christmas. One was a huge candy-cane striped arch crowned with two penguins. Another was a 10 foot high snow globe with Santa and Christmas trees inside. There was a carousel inside a second globe, and miscellaneous snowmen and penguins, and ...Good Lord, I hope that's a reindeer, and not Scooby-doo....
In fact, it turned out to be a huge Scooby-doo which was wearing antlers to simulate a reindeer. I swear I'm not making this up.
It's none of my business, of course, if anyone wants to turn their property into a theme park to celebrate Christmas--especially when I cannot see their property from my modestly decorated (read: wreath on the front door) home. But if we need to simulate the wonder and joy of Christmas with giant inflatable figures, there's something wrong.
Here in Malvern, most people decorate their homes for Christmas, and a substantial minority do so with Christmas lights. Most of these displays are fairly modest and/or tasteful.
Tonight, however, I was taking a walk through town and I saw a home that looked like a Christmas theme park. The actual lights were tasteful enough--simple white lights decorating the wooden fence around the front part of the property, with an archway of light that did this kind of moving light "ripple" effect.
But most of the large front yard was filled with huge, inflatable, internally lighted figures exemplifying the worst excesses of secular, commercial Christmas. One was a huge candy-cane striped arch crowned with two penguins. Another was a 10 foot high snow globe with Santa and Christmas trees inside. There was a carousel inside a second globe, and miscellaneous snowmen and penguins, and ...Good Lord, I hope that's a reindeer, and not Scooby-doo....
In fact, it turned out to be a huge Scooby-doo which was wearing antlers to simulate a reindeer. I swear I'm not making this up.
It's none of my business, of course, if anyone wants to turn their property into a theme park to celebrate Christmas--especially when I cannot see their property from my modestly decorated (read: wreath on the front door) home. But if we need to simulate the wonder and joy of Christmas with giant inflatable figures, there's something wrong.
baffled
There are 12 comments on this entry. (Reply.)