Holiday Tips

This year's most popular holiday geegaw seems to be the inflatable Christmas lawn ornament. Yesterday's hard plastic, molded statues have been replaced by Santas and Snowmen stitched from nylon with blowers attached to their butts.

They're fun and make quite an impression as I drive home through our neighborhood each evening. My only problem is seeing these things in the morning, when the power has been cut to all the blowers. Every front yard has a Santa or a Frosty lying face down in the snow. You'd swear there was a clock tower nearby with some crazed holiday sniper taking potshots at our most beloved Christmas icons.

There's not a lot of snow on the ground right now. Otherwise I'd be tempted to spread a little red food coloring around one of the crime scenes. It's amazing the impact a little red on the snow has. Unfortunately I'm sure some people wouldn't think bleeding snowmen were funny. In fact, I know they wouldn't. A few years ago we built a few real snowmen facing our busy street. As an added touch, I plunged some sticks through their chests and squirted red food coloring all over the wounds. Turns out Deb found out later her boss had to avoid driving by our house because her kids didn't want to see the "scary" snowmen. That means there were probably a few other kids around the neighborhood terrified by our bloody snowmen (heh, heh).

I'm chock full of great ideas like these to help make your season bright. In fact, I'll start sprinkling them throughout the blog until we hit 2005.

Greg's Holiday Tip #1 - Substitute large-scale taxidermy for a tree this year. You'd be surprised how many presents will fit beneath a dead elk.