More Christmas

Each December, one finds more and more displays that boggle the mind. I don’t even know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it certainly isn’t like the good old days in Pocatello, Idaho, when your dad put up a string of lights around your doorway about this time of year. Well, maybe he did, depending, but lots of dads did and the modest colored lighting seemed to change the world.

We're not so easy to impress nowadays. The commercial establishments are of course all out, but even householders have such things as a sleigh plus a full complement of reindeer and Santa carousing across their rooftops with flood lights worthy of a Hollywood premier. There’s a house at the end of our street that looks like something out of Las Vegas or Tokyo with its large array of very bright red and green lights. If my dad were still alive, he’d be saying, ‘Do they think they own the electric company?’

The pictured inflatable Santa Claus globe is sort of modest, I guess, at least as far as electricity use goes. You can see it on the north side of Rex Road. It’s maybe four-feet high, and has lights illuminating it. But the feature is that the snow blows around inside the globe constantly, accompanied by the whirring sound of the motor. Well, God Bless Us, Every One.