Scrooge McLights

Outdoor Christmas displays?

Bah, humbug!

I don't know what's wrong with me.  I'm never been that impressed with outdoor Christmas displays.  Usually when my family goes out at night to view the colorfully decorated homes in our area, I beg off.

Usually I prefer stories to displays.  The displays don't seem to have much of a plot-line.  Yep, there's a bunch a pretty lights.  And a jumbled display of mixed messages.  Lights, sometimes all white, sometimes mixed with red and green, and sometimes a kaleidoscope of discordant colors.  Some of the themes are religious, including full nativity scenes, angels, crosses and stars.  Some are of Santa and the North Pole, sometimes including a sleigh and a full set of reindeer, elves, presents, and maybe even a narwhal.  And others could have anything, ranging from jingled bells, decorated trees, even Star Wars characters or Pokemon (gotta display 'em all!).

The extreme nature and gaudiness of some displays here in Georgia seems to be a way of showing a change of seasons in a place that doesn't often show those changes.  I grew up in Michigan, and it was easy to tell that it was Christmas season.  Several feet of snow usually gave it away.  Not that we didn't have some outdoor displays.  They just weren't necessary to know what time of year it was.

The Scrooge in me also wonders about the tremendous consumption of power these displays must take.  I can't imagine what their utility bills must be.  It must be very important to them to make such a costly display.

It's not that I don't want things to be decorated for Christmas.  I love indoor displays, decorated for the season.  Our trees are artificial, but we have about a half a dozen throughout the house, all decorated with lights and ornaments.  We have nativity scene, advent calendars, Santas and reindeer of all kinds, decorations from different eras, as Alison is a collector of antiques.  I think of indoor displays as something for family and friends, and the outdoor displays as a statement of prestige and competition with others.

And yet....do they really not tell stories?  Maybe it is a failure of imagination that I don't see the complex and rich story each decorated yard is telling me about Christmas, and the owner of the display.  Isn't the idea of Santa at the nativity scene an intriguing one?  Or Luke Skywalker, Obi-Won Kenobi and Hans Solo as the Wise Men?  Is not the birth of Christ the start of the greatest story ever told?

And yet....what is wrong with freedom of expression?  Doesn't that they say a lot about the variety and creativity of this country?  What's wrong with sharing what you feel?  And if you're willing to bear the cost of your display, what's it to anyone else how you want to spend your hard-earned money?

And yet...I find that now that we are settled into the home and neighborhood that we want to stay in for years to come, that we are slowly building up our own outdoor display.  We are adding about one outdoor item each year.  We have a burlap snowman and  a burlap fox, a Victorian lamp post, and an elaborate Christmas wreath.  Not much yet, but if we keep adding one thing each year, in twenty years or so, we may be the gaudiest on our block!

So maybe Scrooge McLights is slowly evolving.  Maybe I just need a visit from the Ghosts of Outdoor Displays to come around in my attitude.  Maybe that visit will come this Christmas Eve!


Merry Christmas!

And no matter what display you like, outdoor or indoor, or even just a soul lit up with the love and miracle of  Christ and this loving season, as Tiny Tim would say - God Bless Us!  God Bless Us, Everyone!