Sunday Morning Post (V.2, #47) - Kitschy Christmas Decorations

A fellow blogger has been bemoaning the fact that he does not have any Christmas lights up yet, while some of his other neighbors have already completed their over-the-top holiday decorating.  This reminded me of an entry I originally wrote for the Christmas season in 2007.  Talk about kitschy Christmas decorations!

Just two caveats about this reprint:  I have not seen the house in King of Prussia in about 10 years.  I have no idea what new displays the owner has erected in those years.  Also, spoiler alert, we never got around to having an outdoor receptacle installed.  Doubtful that we will ever do it now. 

I think it is interesting to see where my mind was in 2007 and see where my mind is today.  I don’t believe much has changed.  Oh, perhaps a few hundred thousand neurons have passed on to that great brain in the sky.  Otherwise I am as demented as ever.  Please enjoy!

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Now is the time of year that everyone puts up his or her holiday decorations.  The main official holiday is Christmas, but hey, with the retail season starting sooner and sooner, we might as well include Halloween, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.  Our decorations are very modest: a green candle in every window.  We’ve bought an outdoor string of lights, but we haven’t used them yet.  We bought the string before we realized that we didn’t have an outdoor socket.  So, we’ll keep them stored away until we can afford an electrician to install an outdoor power source.

Ours are modest, but some people go way over the top with their decorations.  One in particular is in King of Prussia.  The property is a very nice parcel of land with tall pine trees and a number of shrubs in front of the house.  At holiday time you can’t see any of this for all the strings of lights draped the entire length of the trees from the top to the bottom.  Then there are the plywood cutouts.

The cutouts at one end of the yard commemorate the Nativity scene.  There’s a manger with Joseph, Mary and the Christ Child.  All this is fine, but there are other plywood cutouts commemorating another little-known holiday which I’ll call Pixars Greatest Hits. There are cutouts of Monsters, Inc, The Incredibles, and Chicken Little – all with cutesy dialogue balloons that tie them in with Christmas.  Then there are cutouts of The Simpsons and Harry Potter.  The Harry Potter portion is particularly poignant with the three main characters wishing season’s greetings from everyone at Hogwarts.

Okay, let’s dwell on this last one for a moment.  Basically, here we have three little Wiccans extending holiday wishes from their school where they study witchcraft, the supernatural arts and sciences.  THEY DON’T BELIEVE IN CHRISTMAS!! IT DOESN’T WORK!!!

Where is the plywood cutouts for the cast from The Jazz Singer?  Granted the pop culture references may be lost on a 78-year-old movie, but it makes as much sense as Harry Potter.  Yes, yes, I can see it now, cutouts of Warner Oland as the Rabbi father, Eugenie Besserer as Momma Rabinowitz, and Al Jolson as Jackie, down on one knee with arms outstretched!  Yes, yes, and their dialogue balloon could have Jackie saying, “Oy vey! It’s Christmas!”

This could work!  Maybe I could do it at my house…once I get the electrician to install the outside power outlet.

(Thank you for reading.  Come back neurons, come back!)