I dislike anything mechanical, inflatable, or noisy. However, only inflatables make me want to go onto someone’s property and “adjust” each priapic monstrosity with a chainsaw.
I recently passed a house with a half-dozen or so inflatables, all deflated, on the lawn. It looked like a the site of a skirmish in the War on Christmas, in which Christmas had clearly lost.
I think I love you.
I like simple stuff the best, I am a fan of a star at the top of the tree. I never liked angels or crosses at the top. I like the start at the top. Or I can take Santa at the top in place of a star.
I am a fan of homemade stuff on the tree, especially if you have kids. It looks like crap but it’s fun for the kids to make 
I’m gonna join the chorus and say that I also hate inflatables. So, SO tacky, and they look all creepy and dead when they’re deflated on someone’s lawn.
Another thing that wasn’t mentioned: nativity sets. I hate nativity sets with the fire of a thousand suns.* Poorly painted, cheaply made, plastic pieces of crap, all of them. And everyone always looks whiter than the Nazi party.
In fact…I just hate any sort of “figurine” decoration, or lights in the shapes of people and things. Just put up some lights in the bushes and be done with it.
And regarding icicle lights, I don’t hate them, I just wish they weren’t freaking everywhere. At least ten houses in my neighborhood have them, and three of them are right next to each other. My neighbors two doors down (one of those three), have a set made up of LED lights, which light up the entire front lawn in this obnoxiously bright blue-white color. Their entire display is absolutely ghastly.
*I do make an exception for smaller indoor displays. The one my family has is made of simple white porcelain and it sits on a table somewhere.
I like it all. The one thing I like less than the rest is foil papered doors. I don’t know why; it just irks me.
I don’t dislike any particular decorations, in reasonable quantity. But what I don’t like are the houses that are covered with “special effects” that have no rhyme or reason, other than competing with other houses of their ilk. It’s like the people are bragging that they can afford to pay a gigantic electric bill. I’m not impressed.
Nevermind. Rope lights suck.
Chalk me up as an inflatable hater. At least I don’t see any more of those ginormous “snow globes” with the cheesy-looking “snow” tossing around in the wind of a noisy fan anymore. I really hated those.
Years ago, we saw a Christmas display which thankfully never caught on. Someone had set up a slide show which projected onto their garage door. The subject was biblical, and was accompanied by some sort of loud recorded narration droning on about the baby Jesus and all the angels and wise men and stars and blah blah blah blah. It was quite an unavoidable spectacle on the street, as I am sure the instigators intended.
Yep, and yuck, inflatables. This inflatable nativitymight just be the worst ever. What’s up with Big Ass Joseph???
And, I’ll trot out this good story about my wonderful Grandad, 'tis the season. He was a Hollywood musician, and got into a neighborhood Christmas decoration contest with his friend Perry Botkin and Lou (Abbott and) Costello. Every year, they’d try to outdo each other with lights (all sparkly and new in the 50’s), and the neighborhood would vote on it. It would go back and forth, all making a great effort.
One year, Costello went all out, determined to win, and spent way more money on lights than Perry and Larry, pretty much a sure thing. My grandad went to work and made a huge Santa out of plywood , with an animated arm, going up and down,and put it on the roof, finger pointed to Lou’s big show, with the banner, “See Our Display Across the Street!”
They won. Heh! I miss my Grandpa.
I feel like the idea is that Joseph is standing whereas Mary is kneeling.
It does make him stand out in a wholly unnecessary way.
I saw an inflatable tonight which was a ginormous snowman. He must have been 15 feet tall. His middle section was … A GIANT SNOW GLOBE. :eek:
Inflatables are the worst. And they get especially creepy around the second year, when they don’t plump up in all the right places and end up with weird, unidentifiable, floppy extra limbs and obscene bulges in random places. Sadly the giant mutant snow globe kind is still popular in my neighborhood.
In theory I like icicle lights when they are done right, but too many people are lazy. I did however drive by a house last weekend with freakin’ PERFECT icicle lights, I was tempted to stop and go knock on the door and tell them I how impressed I was.
Inflatables, figures lit up from within, wreaths/bows attached to the front grills of autos.
Yes! This is the only stuff that bothers me. Add on to that when the decorating is haphazard. For example, a string of lights just tossed into a bush. Or strings of lights wrapped densely around a tree trunk, but nothing in the branches at all.
I don’t care if your decorating isn’t my style. Tacky is fine too. But put some effort into it!
My neighbor has three ugly inflatables. And they don’t even go together. One of them is a couple penguins with a rotating “snowball cannon.” The other is a big red and green gift box. The third is a Mickey Mouse Santa. They’re huge and ugly and aren’t thematically linked. Not to mention that he uses blinky lights that are all on different speeds. I don’t even look at the house as I pass it; I think I might have a seizure.
Like everyone else, I hate the inflatables. Especially the one my neighbor has, mostly because it is the only decoration he has out and it’s not centered. The visual imbalance of it makes me grit my teeth every time I see it.
Also, and this is just a bizarre phobia, I really hate the light up skeleton reindeer. They are just creepy, especially the ones that move. I am glad they are expensive, as my friends have threatened to buy and set up a herd of them in my yard, which would keep me from going outside at night EVER AGAIN.
I dearly wish to drive around the neighborhood with a BB gun and perforate those godawful inflatable uglies. Don’t know how it’s like for you guys, but here Tacky Blow-Up Season starts Halloween, and by the time Christmas comes around I’ve been staring at those horrors for three months straight.
I saw the creepiest decoration ever on my drive home tonight…it was a life-sized Santa mannikin, possibly motorized (I swear it was moving!), standing on the top step of a front porch and holding a life-sized toddler mannikin. And there was something very wrong with the face…the smile was a bit too wide, maybe. shudder The rest of the yard and house looked like any other in the area – cheap prelit outlines stuck in the ground, mismatched light strands, and questionably placed floodlights.
Malleus, are you referring to the wide variety of Halloween inflatables that were available this year, or do your neighbors put out their Christmas decor extra early?
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who dislikes inflatables. That crap looks so cheap and kitschy.
Were you driving past my in-laws house? They have that one, plus a Santa that goes down a chimney, and light up deer, and, well everything on this poll. I love em, they are wonderful people, but they sure do love to decorate.
My vote was for icicle lights. They look fine at night, but offensively ugly during the day.
But would a BB gun really get the job done? I’m thinking a shotgun loaded with birdshot would really take care of it.
