I live in a land of tasteful Christmas displays. The good residents of Coral Ridge take their holiday decorating cues from Martha Stewart, favoring holiday themes that are understated and elegant. My neighbors favor tiny, white Christmas lights and simple, pine garland to augment lovely wreaths.
Seeing these tasteful displays always makes me remember the lurid Christmases of my youth. My parents loved Christmas and decorated with a fervor that left our refined Coral Ridge neighbors aghast. If my parents had a unifying holiday theme it was, “If it doesn’t move, decorate it.”
Preparations began the day after Thanksgiving when my Dad would string outdoor lights around the house. Dad who had a touch of OCD, insisted on a rigid pattern for the lightbulbs: Blue, green, red, yellow. It was the job of my younger brother and me to screw in the bulbs and if, God forbid, one bulb was out of sequence we had to start over. Curiously, neither my brother nor I thought this odd.
After the lights were on the house, next came lights on the bushes and lights in the trees. There were little wreaths for the windows and big wreaths the doors. One year, Dad somehow got his hands on a live donkey, which became the centerpiece of a live Nativity, until Code Enforcement threatened to take him, and the donkey, to jail.
It barely fazed him; in the meantime there were lighted snowmen on the lawn and Santa and his reindeer on the roof and lighted candy canes to illuminate the driveway. Extension cords running in every direction were a constant tripping hazard but by the time Dad was done, our house was visible from outer space.
While Dad worked outside, Mom tackled the inside. When it came to Christmas, Mom believed that “more is more” and accordingly every horizontal surface in the house was decorated. My mother’s taste ran strongly to plastic poinsettias and puppies in Santa hats.
Running around in a Christmas-cookie induced buzz, Mom made sure to decorate every room, including the bathrooms. She decorated the carport and the back porch. She decorated the laundry room and the closets. She decorated the dog. Every window had lighted Christmas candelabra on the sill and garland around the casement. She had full sets of Christmas china, and complete ensembles of Christmas bath towels, which, under penalty of death, we were given to understand, must never, ever be used.
Because we are Catholic, the centerpiece of my Mom’s Christmas display was always the Nativity scene, set up with love on the dining room buffet. This Nativity featured a cast of thousands: angels, shepherds, kings and the Holy Family, accompanied by dozens of barnyard animals all milling around in a tiny wooden stable. As we got older, my brother and I would put the shepherds and the sheep in compromising positions to see if anyone noticed.
And finally there was the Tree, a veritable monument to questionable taste. My favorite tree was an aluminum number that my mom decorated with purple bulbs . Dad installed a rotating color wheel at its base and, mesmerized and slightly nauseated, we could watch this tree turn from red to blue to green.
A couple of years later, we had a real tree that Dad sprayed with white flocking to make it look like it snowed. This would have been fine except that the flocking, which was pure petroleum, caught fire and almost burned the house down which so freaked out my mother we never had a real tree ever again.
To compensate, my Dad bought a “singing bird” ornament. This was a horrid little gadget that, when plugged in, made loud, chirping noises that made the house sound like an aviary and drove the dog berserk.
When their tasks were done, my parents stood back and regarded their work with a critical eye. “Next year,” my Dad would always say, “we need more.”
“You can never have too much,” my Mom would agree.