Lessons from Christmas Decorations

by Mark Morelli
December 16, 2005

Every year I look forward to the season when it's time to decorate our homes and yards for Christmas. When that season comes, I begin by carrying a pen and paper with me on a long walk around the neighborhood. I carefully note which homes have made the effort to put up all the colored, blinking lights and filled their yard with ornaments and figurines. Then I make myself the promise to show these decorations to the kids.

I won't decorate the outside of my own home. What kind of lesson is that for my children...that it's okay to go out on the roof and climb ladders in cold, icy weather?

Jesus Meets the Rat Pack
What would Jesus do? He'd look at the bright, blinking lights, the candy canes, the elves and say, "This looks like Vegas! Who are the Three Wise Men -- Sammy, Frank, and Dino?"

But I like the Vegas-y feel to all those twinkling lights. Imagine the neon sign: "Jesus! Limited Engagement Thru 12/25!" It's simply using a modern method to relay an ancient message. In fact, it is somehow logical that a house decorated for Christmas resemble a big casino when the birth of Christ took place at an overbooked inn.

General Tso's Christmas
The kids wanted to decorate the yard and house. I said we'd decorate for as long as they were outside with me. We rammed one wooden sign saying "North Pole" into the hard ground. By the time I came out of the garage with the ladder they were inside sipping hot cocoa and dancing to some hip-hop tune that mentioned "virgin" with the words "round yon" nowhere to be heard. That's a lesson well-learned: Don't desire something you can't make happen yourself. (This summer I plan to take them to a poultry farm to kill their own chicken. Because of that, they will either truly appreciate or complete reject McNuggets. I'll keep you posted.)

To sum it up: By making the effort to go out look at the work of others, I am teaching them to be in awe of other people's craftwork. Because we can't make it at home, we go out for Chinese food. Same theory applies.

It's Healthy For Children To Know That Santa's Ass Drags
Have you seen all those plastic Santas and snowmen inflated with air? Even the smallest gust of wind makes them teeter and tip in the yard. "See, kids, that's what happens when you drink too much egg nog," I tell them. In the morning, the Santas are usually deflated, hunched over, sorry looking. It's a good lesson in the price of working too hard. I told my girls, "Remember my busy season? How I was always so tired and crabby after work? Well that pile of plastic is what Santa looks like on December 26th." Hunched over, broken, out of air, it's the promo for the documentary, "Santa's Sadness: The Ho-Ho-Hoax of His Public Persona."

Gaudy or Godly?
What can we learn from the bizarre mish-mash in so many yards of a Biblical nativity scene combined with characters you'd find in some claymation TV Christmas special or Disneyland?

*That we are all part of show biz. Every yard where Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the magi stand side-by-side with Rudolph, elves, Santa, Mickey and Goofy, and even a leftover cast-iron Negro holding a lantern, is like a cartoon movie studio cafeteria. All of the characters are gathered together for some grub before they go back to shoot their movies for the ABC Family Network. Even those plastic cattle have to remember their cue. (Okay, Elsie baby, this is the part where you low, then the poor baby wakes, got it, sweetheart? You need some more udder cream?")

*That every such decorated yard perfectly illustrates how America is at once both sacred and profane. Our pop culture, politics, and religion are now all intermingled. Why shouldn't our yard decor? After all, it is the right wing Fox News' big story of the season to magnify some people's supreme Christian mission to strong-arm pure capitalist retail organizations to force their poor, exhausted, underinsured store clerks to say the word "Christmas" in their greetings to customers who will share with their children the celebration of the Savior's birth by giving the kids Furbys and Bratz dolls. To be perfectly fair and balanced...I once heard a woman wonder annoyingly, "Why there's always just one African-American in all the manger scenes?"

*That you don't have to believe in the literal truth about something in order to have a grand time with it. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz learned he didn't have to hide behind the curtain and scare people to do good. A sled pulled by flying reindeer is about as "out there" as a man walking on water. There's a lot of "show biz" in the gospels, the Penn & Teller-like raising of the dead, or the miracle of loaves and fishes. So it's no harm if we go over the top with our stories and icons and yard ornaments. We love and need parables to shore up our own desires to be good people. Beyond the stories and decoration, we will prove our goodness not by calming stormy seas, but by wiping away each other's tears; not by feeding a multitude of thousands, but by breaking bread in half and sharing it.

And for every performance, there must be an audience. So I gotta go now. The kids are waiting at the door in their hats and mittens and I can't remember where I put the notebook.