Decorating Contests

I began decorating for #Christmas when I was 12 in order to compete in (win!) my neighborhood Christmas decorating contest. That year, I used bolts and bolts of flawed red nylon from the textile plant where my dad worked and wrapped our house like “present.” This rendered our front door, across which I tied the giant bow, completely unusable during the holiday season. Though I didn’t win the decorating contest, I did get my picture in the paper as the kid who “tried to wrap his house.”
A couple years later, in another failed attempt to win the “Best House” award and its congratulatory red-lettered sign, I made a tableau in which it appeared that Santa had fallen off our house into the giant molding leaf pile in our front yard. How the Nickels with their understated Charlestonian pineapple-candle-in-each-window routine beat my Santa-legs-and-black-boots-sticking-out-of-a-leaf-pile-and-flailing-about-in-the-breeze, beats me. But it did. Perhaps if we had snow in South Carolina, my concept would have been a little more compelling.

I’d definitely give this guy (at left) the win for creativity. He recently took down his clever display for two reasons: #1 the police suggested he might cause traffic accidents, and #2 an old lady drove up on his lawn and climbed the ladder to “save him.” She and her arthritic back were none to pleased to find they were saving a dummy. Don’t you love a good Christmas Samaritan?