Now I know we can link it up, but this one is a classic beyond the call from poster Inky. I consider it the most hilarious description of questionable taste in Ornamentation this side of your local Sears. So I repost it again for your enjoyment.
Take this one, print it, and read it to your family over Christmas dinner. Guaranteed gigglefest.
Thanks, Inky!
There is an elderly couple who live on my street: Nonie and Oscar. Every year since they retired, the Christmas Nativity scene they set up on their yard gets more and more intricate.
The stable features two huge styrofoam snowmen, wielding candy canes, guarding the entrance. Once inside, the first thing you’ll notice is the unorthodox depiction of the baby Jesus (most representions of Christ don’t include a big smiley face and red yarn for hair). The Baby Jesus originally included in the nativity set was swiped years ago by some neighborhood kids, who left only his broken plaster penis in the manger. So a Strawberry Shortcake doll has been substituted, and is doted over by Mary, Joseph, and a plastic Gingerbread Man.
Nonie and Oscar got the life-sized plaster figures of Mary, Joseph, and the Wise Men on a trip to Tijuana (I suspect it was a toss-up between these or the little peeing boy birdbath). All the figures came painted in eyeshocking Day-Glo colors. Mary wears an electric blue robe, the wise men are clad in hot pink, neon magenta, and psychedelic purple (mercifully these have faded to less vision-damaging hues over the years).
One point of contention was the black Wise Man. Originally his face was painted a glossy midnight black with candyapple red lips and bright white skyward rolled eyes. This didn’t go over well with some of our more politically correct neighbors, who threatened to go to the City Council. In protest, Oscar painted him lime green with purple lips. He remains that way today.
Because of a lack of room in the mobile home the original stable animals were left on the side of the Interstate. In their place stand a herd of plastic reindeer, a concrete Eeyore the donkey (from Winnie the Pooh) a flock of pink plastic flamingos, a ceramic toad, and, most inexplicably, a large paper mache dinosaur. Last year somebody rearranged two of the plastic reindeer in the “doggy style” position. Oscar thought it was the funniest thing ever and it took a boot thrown at him by Nonie to make him change it back.
I’ve counted seven Santa Clauses (most are hollow plastic with light bulbs inside). Three on the roof of the house, one on top of the stable, one as an unofficial fourth Wise Man, one that seems to be doing something rude to a garden gnome, and a gyrating motorized electric one which short circuited in the sprinklers (it used to go “Ho, Ho, Ho!,” now it goes “Heewoorah, Hwoorah, Heeewoooorah!!!”).
The rest of the lawn is a tangle of blinking, mismatched lights and features a snowman and woman made out of tumbleweeds stacked three high and spraypainted white.
If you were to go out and PURPOSELY try to make the ugliest, tackiest, most garish Christmas scene on Earth, you couldn’t touch this display.
Nonie and Oscar don’t view all this as tacky in the least.
[Edited by Ukulele Ike on 12-04-2001 at 09:31 AM]
