I put large, plaid holiday bows on all of my gargoyle statuettes. Does that count?
oh my gawd, I need that. I might even put up a tree just for that.
Oh, I forgot about the outdoor stuff. I had to make this one myself: Mr. Hanky
For reasons no one remembers, a set of Transformers (3 yellow construction vehicles and a green jeep) have been hung on the family tree since my brother’s age was still a single digit.
As for purposely a Christmas decoration, I have a Cthulhu ornament.
Wooden chicken in Santa hat, glass Wallaby, Singing Mr. Hanky, and a horse skull with a shining red nose.
I do all the house lights in white. Thousands of them. Except one single red one in the nose of the horse skull perched on the rock wall.
My tribute to Rudolph.
We have two identical plastic balls the size of ping pong balls embossed with Santa faces. Both have little metal nodes, and when you connect the nodes by holding the ball, they say “Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas!” They look exactly the same, and date from a time when small electronics like this were fairly novel.
The strange part is despite being identical, one says the trademark phrase is in a classic Santa Claus voice- deep, jolly and resonant.
The other, however, is very flat, a bit nasal, and kind of sounds like a Jewish stereotype.
How did this happen? Why two wildly different voices? And how did my family ever discover this? It’s all so baffling.
We have a homemade “Teddy bear in an outhouse” (complete with scrap of TP) decoration - made of plastic canvas (and teddy figurine) by my husband’s grandmother.
Every year, since we were kids at my mom’s house, she sets up some sort of scene with holiday-themed stuffed animals (on a sled, sitting in doll chairs, etc), mostly things like teddy bears wearing Santa hats.
And Chewbacca. A stuffed Chewbacca, that my brother received as a kid around the time of the actual first Star Wars movie, and somehow one year Chewie got packed up with the Christmas teddies and now he is a permanent fixture of the Christmas tableau. It’s maybe funnier to us because my mom doesn’t know who Chewbacca is, I don’t think she realized for a number of years that he wasn’t specifically a themed holiday toy. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Chewbacca. With bandolier, I should mention.
Does gift wrapping count?
I worked for a company once, where the receptionist got assigned to a special project, to type the entire user manual for our software product into a database. (The concept was dumb, but it wasn’t her idea. It was the boss’s idea.) She spent at least six months or so doing that, during which time she printed out ream after ream of drafts. I scavenged those from them wastebaskets and took the home to use the backsides for scratch paper.
Separately, we ran an extended test of our product (point-of-sale software) that resulted in miles of sales receipts being printed. The receipt printer didn’t have a cutter, so we got massive piles of continuous cash register receipt piled up on the floor.
So, when it came time for the office Christmas party, I cut up a bunch of pages of draft user manual into odd-ball shapes and taped them all together to make a large crazy-quilt of user manual pieces, which I used as wrapping paper (with the printed side out, of course). And I made a bow out of already-printed cash register receipt tape.
The same receptionist was in charge of collecting all the gifts at the office, to be taken to the party. When I brought her the box thusly decorated, she said “Thanks. I needed that!” Everybody got a big kick out of it.
A hanging christmas tree decoration of Oscar and Truman from the Liberty Meadows comic strip by frank Chu.
Two ashtrays from the late 1950s. One depicts Santa observing a rocket taking off. The other shows a monkey inside a tiny space capsule in orbit.
WTF?
The Christmas Clam. It’s made of some sort of material that when placed in water, it grows to 3 times its original size. The you dry it out and it shrinks back.
I do this every year. I have no idea why.
My Nativity is made up of different toys and action figures. Disney princesses are the shepherds, superheroes are the wise men, Fisher-Price Little People figures are the Holy Family and many of the animals in the scene. There are a couple of unusual animals present. I’m pretty sure there were no toucans or llamas at the original scene, but I find them charming.
Now I have photos! This is Frosty, don’t stare too long…
And I don’t know if I mentioned them in here, but I do love my Christmas bunnies.
er… isn’t that just a turd wearing a Santa hat? I like it, though.
I have a couple of Christmas newts that come out every year. They are purple sparkly rubber things – I think they are supposed to be fishing lures. We started putting them out about 20 years ago when my boy was little. I’m not sure how they became associated with Christmas. They are starting to melt and disintegrate, so I don’t know how much longer they’ll be around.
I don’t put up a tree, but rather string a long strand of colored lights across my high-ceiling living room, then hang ornaments from the light strand. It’s very festive and fills up the whole room. Few of the ornaments are standard issue colored balls. There are animals of all kinds, both realistic and cartoonish, sailing ships, vegetables, fish and sea creatures, Oregon State University baubles, rockets, trains, a scuba diver, and of course, scooters.
One Christmas about ten years ago we had a box of satsumas, and apparently we got tired of them and didn’t eat the last one. It did not rot, but dried up and petrified. It is now light as a feather. I think of it as a Christmas decoration, but it doesn’t get put away. It has been sitting on my kitchen counter in a ramekin for 10 years.
My grandma used to make these bells out of different colored beads to use as Christmas ornaments. Everyone in or remotely connected to our family received and cherished grandma’s beaded bell ornaments.
One year she decided on a variation involving 2 tiny, flipper-like angel wings and a doll head. The doll head of course featured a pipe cleaner halo. The private consensus among family was that these beaded angel bell ornaments, like Grandma’s home canned potatoes, were not a success and were possibly even an embarrassment.
But I love, love, love my doll head beaded angel ornaments.
A picture of Chris Foy, an English soccer referee, has become a fixture on the Christmas tree - hanged on a noose for his appalling decisions when refereeing the Spurs match at Stoke three or four years ago.
I hold grudges very seriously…