The family REALLY should have asked for permission from the neighbors before anyone else. Just because some of the neighbors were on board doesn’t mean they should have concluded everyone was.
If it was just the one neighbor who had a problem, it may have been more neighborly if he had contacted the family directly and asked them to remove the luminaries from his frontage. He shouldn’t have involved the mayor with this silliness.
But…even if the neighbor is a giant jerk, I’m sure he’s not the only one who didn’t want a bunch of lights set up in front of his house. More than a few people don’t celebrate Christmas. Not everyone who does celebrate is into silly decorations and pageantry. But all of these people are still a part of the community and shouldn’t be made out to be “grinches” for not wanting to participate. Nor should they have to grin and bear decorations they don’t want, even if it is just for a night. Because if they had said nothing, that may give the family a green light to do something even bigger and bolder next year. You gotta cut that shit in the bud. The neighborhood shouldn’t be anyone’s personal Christmas Winter Wonder Land. Invite everyone over for eggnog and cookies if you want to encourage community spirit.
It isn’t a big deal, any way you look at it. The neighbor shouldn’t have whined to the mayor. The mayor should have stayed out of it. And the family shouldn’t have acted all butthurt and gone to the news. Christmas has become the season for faux outrage, it seems.
It seems both pretty and absurdly generous of the family. I barely notice Christmas, but can’t imagine taking offence at a row of lights lining the path.
And that would apply whether they were hindu lights, muslim lights or any other festival lights.
I posted about this on Fark earlier: Jason left Christmas Eve dinner and picked up all of the luminaries with the exception of a few.
“I cleaned up the whole block. I left his [the neighbor that complained]. Maybe that’s me being a little spiteful about it,” he said.
Wow, what a dick.
Alvator had a change of heart and cleaned it up Thursday.
Oh, after the whole holiday was over. Even more of a passive aggressive dick.
“It had nothing to do with religion. It was about bringing people in our neighborhood closer together,” Jason said.
Yes, we do it on Christmas Eve because it has nothing to do with religion.
Look, there’s not a war on Christmas. It’s more a war on stupid people who think that their religion should be the default mode for EVERYBODY. Knock the shit off.
I wouldn’t care about any kind of lights or anything, not a big deal at all, and I find it petty to make an issue out of it. But I would be mildly annoyed at someone decorating the whole neighborhood without consulting the other neighbors.
Some community-minded folk in a street in Ivanhoe (an upper middle-class suburb of Melbourne) decorate their houses in the run-up to Christmas each year. It started with just one house sixty-odd years ago, and now involves the whole street…whether they like it or not I guess.
And it creates traffic chaos with hundreds of thousands of cars blocking roads every single night. It would piss me off something shocking to have to live there…but it is so renowned that you’d have to be an idiot to buy a property on that road without also giving your approval to be part of the annual madness.
So maybe Mr Grinch has heard of The Boulevard, and wants to nip the craziness in the bud before it takes off??
I’d be annoyed if someone tried to decorate my house. I don’t do Christmas. I’m ok if you celebrate, but please don’t force it on me.
This reminds me of a local family that does a huge display every year. People come from tens of miles away to see it. They were even featured on a reality TV competition about decorating houses for Christmas. The problem is their neighbors can’t even drive down the street and park in their own driveways, because of the traffic it brings. The city finally shut down the streets in the neighborhood, posted some off duty cops for control, and billed the family. There has been a ton of attempts at resolving this.
The family that does the decoration says they don’t understand why anyone would complain - after all, it’s fun for everyone. Um…clearly, everyone doesn’t mean the same thing to them that it means to me.
I do celebrate Christmas and decorate and I’d still be annoyed if someone tried to decorate my house. It’s my damn house. If you want to decorate the whole street buy up all the houses in town, like Edward Bloom in Big Fish
Yeah, no. I would have been a belligerent prick about it. (Ok. So maybe that’s my default state.) I would have marched right out to the end of my driveway and told them to knock it off. Don’t decorate my house.
I can appreciate the fact that you live in a bubble where ideas aren’t contested, but the whole point of that bubble is to keep things contained. Expand your bubble into my bubble, and there are issues. My bubble doesn’t like your bubble, and my bubble is a dick.
Bubble. <- If you stare at it long enough, it starts to look misspelled. (Tell me it doesn’t.)
I agree with this. I celebrate Christmas, and I like other people’s decorations just fine. But I don’t want my houses lit up similarly. Especially in a way that looks like everyone’s. That just ain’t how I roll.
I’m a bit tired of hearing about good intentions when the potential fall-out should seem obvious to anyone halfway intelligent. I almost feel like the family intended to cause a kerfuffle just so they could get on Faux News and get their 15-minutes of fame. Teaneck, like pretty much every place in NJ, has a large Jewish population. How can you NOT ask for permission from your neighbors, knowing this is the case? I don’t know what a candle placed out on Christmas Eve signifies in a theological sense, but it sure isn’t a secular symbol.
This is kind of making me think of that thread we had about Christmas traditions and how ridiculous they can be when they are too intentional or staged.
Yeah, this Jason is a pretty sterling example of someone being a dick, then whining about it.
You know, if I did something like this and someone was offended or hurt, I’d feel ashamed and embarrassed. Isn’t that what most people feel when they inadvertently hurt someone else?
Putting lights on the street in front of my house is decorating my house.
Putting lights out on the street? Totally cool, but only if you ask permission first, and only if everyone is on board. I celebrate Christmas. I even like it! I’d be all for this, but I’m adult enough to recognize that the rest of the neighborhood might not feel the same way. If you try to do it without asking me first, I am going to feel like you’re pushing your agenda upon me, and THAT, I always have a violent and negative reaction to. I don’t like being bullied, and I kneel at the altar of Spite.
The public property in front of everyone’s houses was decorated. Which is actually more ballsy, if you think about it. The property belongs to everyone, no matter what the religious affiliation. Thus, everyone should get to say what goes or doesn’t go there.
He sees the luminaries as a gesture of good will. But someone is equally free to interpret it as yet another instance of a Christian trying to pass proselytization off as a good deed. Frankly, I’m tired of people’s justified feelings being downplayed because the “intention were good”. If the intention was, “Let’s all celebrate Jesus since we’re all a community of Jesus worshippers like I am!”, then no, the intentions weren’t good. People shouldn’t have to pretend this is the case just to be a good neighbor.
I’m not Jewish, but this is my thought, too. I kept expecting it to be DECORATIONS!!! or actually on someone’s house or religious in nature, yet… no. Just a few lights adorning the curbs. I’d think I was losing my mind if I’d have complained.
Now, should they have asked everyone beforehand? Yup.
Should they have removed them and apologized as soon as they realized they’d hurt someone’s feelings? Indeed.
Was the “slippery slope” argument one to consider? I suppose.
Does this have to signify anything beyond pretty or, perhaps, as lighting a pathway for Santa and his reindeer? Maybe.
Did this guy need to involve the news? Nope. No more than the other neighbor needed to call the mayor.
Ultimately, this is much adornment about nothing. So much for a festive holiday season.
Next Hanukkah, the Jewish family should canvas the street to see who’d be behind planting menorahs that progressively light along the entire block, while insisting, of course, that the display isn’t about religion but happy, neighbourly co-operation.
A menorah is clearly a Jewish religious symbol whereas luminaries are used for many different purposes, Christmas being one of many (luminaria in Gettysburg in June). The guy even said it was not religious. So Alvator was wrong and should have consulted everybody, but the Jewish neighbor complaining to the mayor is worse. He could have just gone out to his curb and removed them.
As someone who has been on both sides of the religious debate, I can at least now sorta see where people come up with this whole “War on Christmas” thing. Truly, just plain lights are about the least offensive, or connected to anything, so-called symbol imaginable. I’d be ashamed of myself if I got upset over something so benign.
