Thursday, December 9, 2010

Zombies, Vampires and Radioactive Santa

He's baaaaaaaaack!
It's that time again. Time when folks in the CT suburbs work feverishly to outdo each other in cheesy lawn decorations. It generally starts at 12:01 am, the day after Thanksgiving.

The trends seem to have cycles. They don't change as often as clothing fashions, but every few years there's a new big thing and everyone who's anyone has to have it.

For years it was those white wicker Zombie Reindeer. Some folks still have those. I'm ok with those now, but that first year they appeared, they were EVERYWHERE! Herds of them all over lawns. Some were even motion-activated so when you went by, they'd turn their heads. Creepy.

This year, there are Vampire Inflatables sprouting up from lawns everywhere here. You know the ones. Ginormous Santas, Snowmen, and Reindeer that litter the lawn like corpses all day and magically inflate and light up at dark. Vampires. Who else would think that dead Santa on the lawn all day is attractive?

And of course, the Bear has his Santa hat on and a Christmas flag speared through the heart. Each year he is joined by Radioactive Santa. Now, when we originally bought the house, the neighbor's garage was adjacent to ours at the end of a long driveway. Each year, they'd put Santa on the roof and light him up. Son O'Mine would wave to Santa each night. Cute stuff.

However, in the way of the suburbs, things changed. We put on an addition to the house. So within months, the neighbors built a big two-car-two-story garage in front of the old one. We didn't really think much of it, till the night of the day after Thanksgiving.

They put Santa (same Santa 25 years later - CT peeps are crazy, but thrifty) up on the roof of the new garage (which is now in a direct line with our bedroom window) and jammed a bazillion watts up his ass.

From Thanksgiving to New Years, we have to keep our bedroom drapes closed tight now, or Sparky and I get sunburned while we sleep.

I'm considering lead-lined shades - do they come in robin's egg blue?

2 comments:

  1. Great post! Near my office, a few neighbors are competing with super-sized objects on their lawn--giant inflatable Halloween things to giant inflatable Thanksgiving things to giant inflatable Christmas things. It all gets more garish as the season progresses, and you've brought out the ridiculousness of it all.

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  2. We have one neighbor who adds another display each day from Thanksgiving till Xmas - by New Years her lawn looks like the Vegas strip!

    But I think the inflatable manger trumps them all in weirdness!

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