A Very Tacky Christmas

Even if this doesn't irritate the next-door neighbors, Tim and I have already gotten our money's worth out of our new 8-foot tall inflatable Homy.

Friday night when I left for work, I did a complete circle around the court just so I could get a good look at our house. Tasteful window candles; rustic, all-natural arrangements on the porch and window boxes; and then this visual discordant trumpet blast in the middle of the yard. I laughed until my eyes watered. You really need to see it in the dark to get the full terrible effect. I wanted to put a couple of floodlights on it for good measure (aimed more or less toward the leaf-blower loving neighbor), but Tim nixed that idea.

Why the hell did we buy this thing and put it up? Partly to annoy the neighbors, but I look at this as a kind of vaccine. My attitude toward the whole holiday season is like a yearly disease I just sort of wallow in and put up with. The sorrow at the passing of another year, the depression at the increasing darkness and cold, the rage/misery at the onslaught of blatant commercialism, the loss of the meaning of the season, the exhaustion from all the added holiday work and stress... In order for a vaccine to work, it has to contain a little of the bad stuff in order to stimulate immunity. Homy represents just enough of everything that's bad about Christmas, while not causing us too much pain. I can honestly say I'm probably going to have myself a little cackle every time I see his ugly butt outside the front window while I'm slogging away on that treadmill every evening before work.

And that will go a long way toward fighting the darkness in this mad season.