Merry Christmas, dear reader!  I love Christmas as much as the next blackguard, but I don’t feel the need to decorate the outside of the house every Christmas.  It, quite simply, seems like a huge pain in the ass.  And for what?  The neighbors’ and other weirdos amusement?  I don’t particularly care for either weirdos or neighbors, so I don’t see the point.  Apparently, many of my neighbors feel differently.  This year, in particular, many of them have gone absolutely apeshit with their outdoor Christmas décor and lights.  When I say “apeshit,” I mean unironically using Clark Griswold as their inspiration and mentor.  Most of these projects have actual budgets…serious money is being spent on this garishness. My issues with this seasonal silliness are myriad, but I’ll just give you the top three:

1.  These are the lowlands of California, which is to say there is no such thing as a white Christmas.  It doesn’t snow here.  I’m old enough to remember the last time it did “snow” in this valley, and that was in 1976.  Since then, not a flake.  Because our governor is an incompetent ass who doesn’t understand even the most basic concepts of deforestation or successfully managing water resources, California is in a state of perpetual drought, regardless of how much rain falls in a given year, most people’s front yards look like the Arizona desert during Christmastime:
   dead lawn and patches of dirt.  Which makes oversized inflatable snowmen look absurdly out of place.  Traditional “winter” Christmas décor where there is no snow comes off as desperate and rather pathetic.
2. These overdecorated and hyperlit houses draw all manner of bridge and tunnel trash into the neighborhood.  There are, of course, no bridges or tunnels here, but you know what I mean: other desert-dwellers in desperate attempts to have something like a white Christmas but don’t have a budget set aside for a professionally designed lightshow drive around looking for other people’s ostentatious displays, which leads a lot of them to my street.  And they don’t do quick drive-bys… no, they drive slower than a parade and oftentimes completely stop and just park it in front of their favorite festooned houses.  This causes actual traffic at inordinate times on an otherwise quiet street.  This, in turn, causes dark states of piss off and anger amongst the various UPS, Amazon, and DoorDash drivers trying to make their way to my door.  “Fuck it, bro…you’re on your own…I’m 750 feet from your house and I haven’t moved for 20 minutes…you’re going to need to pick this shit up yourself,” is a common theme of messages sent to me from delivery drivers these past two weeks.  Then when I do leave the house after dark, I end up ruining multiple Christmases and possibly causing psychological trauma to scores of children who, wide-eyed and gaped-mouthed are enjoying staring at the millions of Christmas lights and various animated inflatable displays when their fragile little yuletide minds are suddenly forced to cope with some crazed and likely drunk writer yelling about traffic and calling their parents pig-fuckers and all sorts of bad and profane noise.  Nobody wants that.  So do us all a favor and stay home.
3. As glorious as many of these displays may be in the dark of night, in the morning light, they’re absolutely ghastly.  The only experience I can liken it to is stumbling out of a San Francisco rave at dawn, just as the drugs are wearing off, and you’re forced to go from sexy darkness that’s illuminated only by sexy lasers making even the most drug-addled revelers look good out into the brutal and excruciating dawn, where all your fellow partiers looks like hammered shit and the gorgeous girl you’ve been following around all night now looks like an animated corpse trying to find a ride home.  These yards that only hours before were cutting edge holiday light shows now look dead.  The lights are off, and the owners have turned off the air pumps that keep the inflatable displays inflated, and now they’re just flaccid, lifeless flaps of plastic laying across lawns and roofs like spent condoms tossed on the pavement in the high school parking lot the morning after prom.  It’s gross and depressing.  Which I believe are the exact sorts of feelings Christmas is meant to avoid.

I’m quite dubious about whether or not next Christmas will be in any way “normal,” but whatever’s going on, at least please consider toning down the outside lights and displays next year.  They vex me deeply and make the baby Jesus cry.

N.P.: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” – Gary Hoey