Holiday Decoration: What is Excess?

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I am a snob with a highly selective trashy underside. I love carnivals in the summer. In the winter I adore holiday decorations, the more garish the better. Apollo reigns in my universe for most of the year, but as the days grow shorter and the nights stretch on and on I give Dionysus my unqualified approval (as long as there is a designated driver).

New Orleans has weeks of Carnival. The rest of the country does quite nicely with Christmas decorations.

I passed one of my traditional favorite displays this morning. In the front yard of a trailer (and on the roof of the trailer and perched in the ornamental trees near the trailor and the picket fence around the trailer there are at least 150 Santas and snowmen and elves and all the other icons of the season including the Holy Family and their guests.

After dark, the display's colored lights are turned on and key figures are illuminated. This is particularly gaudy since the trailer is between two graveyards (right on the other sides of the picket fence) and across the street from a third.

I also found a new favorite. This summer the ranch house changed hands and the new owners probably have ancestors from Lappland. Or perhaps not. What they do have is a herd of reindeer--at least six different sorts--crowding their front yard. No Santa, no sleigh, no elves--just a glorious plentitude of reindeer.

I don't decorate outside myself, because I need my energy for admiration.

Do you decorate for the neighbors or for passers by? Do you feel a modest string of lights is good and sufficient or do you relish a gracious plentitude of K mart and the kitchen sink?

Are you--gasp--offended by seasonal exuberence?

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Hmmmm. . . I love an excess of tasteful christmas decorations. . . love them to death. . . give me enough velvet ribbon and garlands and twinkly lights and beautiful ornaments and sweet-smelling trees and towels and music and pinecones and card holders and candles and bells and. . .

You see? :-)

However, outside decorations tend to get to me. . . those cheap-looking plastic santa clauses or, heaven forbid, the cracked and chipping nativity scene, subtly backlit by a mess of gaudy lights.

And also those funny moving deer that people in the south put outside their houses. (if you've never seen these, it's really quite an experience. . .)

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Princess Sash--

Moving deer? I've missed those. My cup is not yet running over!

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Oh, they're alternately wonderful and horrifying. . . white deer frames with lights. . . and the most expensive ones (we're talking 50 bucks apiece, these deer) move their heads up and down. . . I pity the poor REAL deer who come wandering through there. . .

"heeeeey. . . waitaminute. . ."

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I'm with you Noddy. Do it in excess or don't do it at all. If you are not tasteful at least be entertaining.

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Oh yes! My son was begging for the moving reindeer. Fortunately, our next door neighbors with the 2 yr. old got two of 'em. Male and female. Now my son just has to look out his window. (Whew! Saved $100!) Their larger (male) reindeer was stolen last weekend, but they bought a replacement and had it back up & nodding by last night.

We have white lights all over the azalea bushes across the front of the house, outlining the round-topped red front door, the balcony, and white icicle lights around the entire porch (covers the front of the house.) Then big red velvet bows on all three columns and holding up swags of evergreen boughs across the balcony railing. And of course, a nice big wreath on the front door.

Lots of people in our neighborhood decorate.

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everything I do is in good taste, however everything my neighbors do is in excess.

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I have to say that I think that any more than 2 santas with sleighs, and more than 8 reindeer apiece, per front yard, is excessive, and confusing. Razz

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I've got a fairly low tolerance for Christmas decorations.
If I had my way, people would just decorate trees outside their houses with nothing more than red ribbons, and MAYBE some clear lights. No decorations on the house past a simple wreath, and nothing plastic on the tree inside (though I don't mind if the tree isn't real).
I am sometimes amused by very decorated homes and buildings, but I'm always grateful they're not too close to me.
It's odd, because I generally don't mind gaudiness and silliness but Christmas craziness really distresses me. I like my Advent candles and will light one additional one each Sunday til Christmas.

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Ooh. . . the hihpster is always getting on me for colored lights. . . apparently in Germany they only use clear or yellow lights. . . and blinking? nooooooo. . .

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Blinking lights? That is a definite no in my book. <shudder>

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I am an absolute lover of the Holiday (check my 'tree is up' thread....

I love decorations - that are done with a flow....

I love decorations that ''match'' and that have more than just 'tossed up there' look 'em. I live in an apt, so get to to fully indulge the way I'd like outside....but I love to see the outsides of other houses looking really really nice.

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dyslexia wrote:

everything I do is in good taste, however everything my neighbors do is in excess.

Damn right, dys.
MY decorations are beautiful, elegant and festive. However, my neighbors with the kitschy moving reindeer and Santa's head luminarias are tacky, tacky, tacky. What's that you say? You don't like my Santa Claus flag with the matching gold flagpole?
Laughing

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I'm getting more and more into decorating the house inside and out, getting a bigger tree this year, more ornaments, battery-run candles in nine front windows, a big wreath with lites in the front living room window, two matching wreaths on the front double doors, a couple of golden star garlands, gilded leaves, twigs and stemwork I made myself placed atop mirrorframes and some classy tabletop displays all around the house. I'll share my rationale with you guys...I'm collecting stuff, and decorating more every year in preparation for my future grandkids. Smile

Of course, my decorations are the epitome of elegance, sophistication and good taste.

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ehBeth wrote:

I've got a fairly low tolerance for Christmas decorations.
If I had my way, people would just decorate trees outside their houses with nothing more than red ribbons, and MAYBE some clear lights. No decorations on the house past a simple wreath, and nothing plastic on the tree inside (though I don't mind if the tree isn't real).
I am sometimes amused by very decorated homes and buildings, but I'm always grateful they're not too close to me.
It's odd, because I generally don't mind gaudiness and silliness but Christmas craziness really distresses me. I like my Advent candles and will light one additional one each Sunday til Christmas.

I'm pretty much the same: I like my decorations to be low-key, with none of the tackiness you see everywhere. I always get a real tree, embellish it a little with a few ribbons and a few things that I've made from pinecones and the like. I can, however, tolerate the gaudiness of some people: gh, when I was younger, both my mother and my grandmother did their houses up extremely tackilly, with plastic trees, crappy boubols with weird things on them, these really weird pink hexagonal twinkling lights, little Santas everywhere, plastic things hanging from the ceiling, on the walls, and more... Heavens, it was awful. Thank God that they never did it outside. What makes me laugh is people doing their exterior up in the way that my mother (still) does the interior of her house up... competing with each other with fake Santas on the roof that waggle their legs, and neon monstrosities.... and they all think that their houses are the epitomes of taste!

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I do draw the line at Santa and his sleigh landing on the roof of the stable with the manger scene.

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One of my fondest memories as a kid is my father piling us in the car and we'd ride all around the southside of Chicago to look at the Christmas decorations. When your a kid, the more lights, the better. I can tolerate and even encourage the more is more attitude when it comes to Christmas decorations, if nothing else. If someone wants to light up their entire house and cover every square inch of their yard with flashing and twinkling reindeer, I just love it.

I don't get the red velvet bows on display outdoors tho'. Confused

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Yep, I mentioned those moving deer someplace recently -- we have 'em next door, too, sozlet loves them.

eoe wrote:

When your a kid, the more lights, the better.

Amen.

I'm still trying to figure out how to put lights outside. I don't like the open window option, don't have an outdoor outlet, don't want to pay to make one. I do like white lights, though.

Usually all we do (haven't done it yet) is homemade wreath on door, pine boughs and pine cones in window box, and red ribbon wound around the railing/ columns of our little porch (Victorian house with a little gingerbread on the porch.)

I usually get a tree a little bit larger that what I want, cut off about 6 good-sized boughs from the botttom, and use those for decorations. (What I mentioned already, plus I have a set of little silver vases I put them in with some red pepperberry, etc.)

sozlet loves it all, but that's a bit too low-key for her. She does adore the Christmas tree with white lights, holly lights, and a ton of ornaments, but I think she REALLY wishes we would get a giant inflatable and illuminated Frosty like the folks a few doors down.

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Of course she does.

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sozobe wrote:

...sozlet loves it all, but that's a bit too low-key for her. She does adore the Christmas tree with white lights, holly lights, and a ton of ornaments, but I think she REALLY wishes we would get a giant inflatable and illuminated Frosty like the folks a few doors down.

Oh no... but, if Christmas can't be about the children, what can?

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