It’s getting pretty bad around here.
You know. My neighborhood.
It started before Halloween when several of our fellow Muggle inhabitants chose to both decorate and put up lights.
For Halloween.
I’m not talking about a random plastic lighted jack-o-lantern here and there. I mean strings of orange and white lights, inflatables, and elaborate figurine displays.
I mean, come on, don’t these folks have anything better to do? Why don’t they treat Halloween like the rest of us — scrambling around late in the afternoon on Halloween itself looking for the meager, years old bargain bin crapola we will gladly drape over our doorway and sagging fall foliage in the front yard?
After all, that’s tradition.
So I tried to file away this year’s early decoration phenomenon as simply a one-year anomaly, until early one evening last week I spied something very disturbing while cruising down an adjacent street to ours.
Oh, My God.
Christmas lights. Somebody has already hung up (and turned on) their Christmas lights!
Mark the day: November 8th.
That’s just wrong.
And I have to make a distinction among neighbors, at this point. We do have a few who apparently never take down their Christmas lights. I guess during some long ago December they made the effort to hang them and simply decided that once was enough, damn it.
There’s a certain logic to that approach, I suppose. But at least these lazy butts people have the decency not to illuminate for the balance of the year.
You know that would truly be in bad taste.
I guess compared to hanging early, it is only a little less distasteful to leave your lights up year round, and there’s a certain measured ambivalence in doing so, especially around here. It’s almost like thumbing your nose at the HOA. After all, as I’ve mentioned previously, our HOA would not seem out of place in 1938 Germany — I half-expect a Kristallnacht to occur one of these years.
To compound matters this year, a local radio station started playing 24 hour a day Christmas music last week — about November 15.
And they are proud of it.
But let’s think about this. How many possible recorded versions of Little Drummer Boy can there be in existence? I’m guessing plenty, unfortunately.
Plenty.
Which brings me back to what exactly I’m supposed to do about all this premature display activity.
Well, I have thought it through (not really), and have come up with the following.
I have decided that I will wait until the last possible day to put up decorations. I have decided that they will be as kitschy and rusty as possible. I have decided that those made out of plastic absolutely must originate from China. And I have decided to keep whatever original yard and house display I put together will remain fully functioning and lighted all the way through the end of January, or until I blow one of the house’s main fuses — whichever occurs first.
And just to demonstrate that our Nazi Storm Trooper wonderful HOA scions have a heart and really do care about appearances around in our neighborhood, today we received a letter from them to trim down the three dead palm fronds in our yard that are visible from the road.
Yeah, I’ll trim them soon enough, after I get the holiday lights up.
Sieg Heil! Merry Christmas!
– Dad
The Daily Trip 