Monday, December 08, 2003

God Rest Ye Proportionate, Gentlemen

This is the first year I've had the opportunity to put up big-girl Christmas lights outside, and I wound two strands around the staircase leading to my apartment. It is exceedingly awesome. (Also, you really, really need to know that as I put them up I was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sunglasses-- and I was sweating. You're welcome. Viva Swamp Living!)

Home decor is fun, in extremely limited doses, but I fail to understand the people who plunk down and plug in any random Christmas-related lighted object. It reflects nothing but your own lack of discrimination and apparent desire for an electric bill outstripping that of several South American nations.

I drove by one house last night that featured two separate and complete sets of chicken-playing Santas and reindeer, aiming at one another from opposite ends of the house; an entire herd of those exceedingly creepy light-up reindeer that move (I hate those things, by the way, and the stupid white wooden ones too. One year, though, which shall henceforth be known as The Best Christmas Ever, my family was driving to Midnight Mass and passed a wooden reindeer pair that some presumably drunken person-- who, it must be noted, still had better taste than the homeowner-- had placed in what I shall delicately refer to as the Paris Hilton position. Look, boys and girls! It's the Screwing of the Deer!) and, very disturbingly, an inflatable, eight-foot Frosty, which is bad enough on its own but completely horrifying when placed next to a four-foot light-up Nativity scene. Frosty was positively towering over the defenseless baby Jesus and a totally expressionless Virgin Mary. It was a Godzilla movie for suburban Catholics. To paraphrase a friend of mine, "The Tacky Christmas Decoration Fairy had arrived and threw up all over the lawn."

You'd think St. Joseph would have done something about it, but he had his back to the world-ending snowman. Dude. Back to the wall, always. Back to the wall. Can't forever be counting on those angel-dreams to protect you, man.

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