The Decorum of Decoration

Holy Holly! What's this thing made of?

If you didn't get your outdoor decorations up by yesterday, it's too late. Next weekend is out. It's just plain tacky to decorate the last weekend before Christmas. The acceptable tradition is to complete most shopping on Black Friday, decorate outdoors by that Sunday, order a few stocking stuffers on Cyber Monday, and drink egg nog in your Christmas sweater till the big day. The rest of us will be hitting the streets looking for black-market candy canes.

So yesterday the pressure was on to get our yard decorated. We cleared the front yard of the spare tires and the beer cans and went out shopping for new decorations. It didn't take long to spot a beautiful ornament in a shopping center. It was near a curb so I guess they were throwing it out. Boy, that sucker was heavy, but we got it into the truck just as the mall cop was coming to help us.

The first year we were married, 1968, my husband and I decided to make an outdoor decoration. We had no kids, so we really knew how to waste time. We made a giant peace symbol, slapped tons of lights on it and hung it on the side of our chimney. We thought it was pretty cool, so we went inside the house to drink Ripple by the fire and listen to Tony Bennett sing Christmas carols on the "stereo."

Peace at Christmas

Barely ten minutes had gone by when we heard bongo drums and guitars, and smelled burning rags. We discovered a band of hippies dancing around a fire on our front lawn. Their VW van was parked directly behind ours on the street. Neighbors were peering out their windows. A cop drove by slowly.

My husband dashed into the house and grabbed the box of Ripple wine. He presented it to a girl with flowers in her hair and told her if they all left they could keep the wine. The hippies joined hands and circled my husband and me singing some kind of victory song. After we all hugged about 6 times they left.

We had that peace sign off the chimney in a matter of seconds.