Ho, Ho, Huh?
Husband and I went to the grocery store today and all the employees were wearing Santa hats. OK, very festive. But we had a silver lame Santa hat. A San Francisco 49ers Santa hat. And a pink breast cancer awareness hat.

Nothing against the Niners, but is Santa really a football fan? And, if so, why the Niners?

I think it's great when people get the holiday spirit. I'm all about people being nicer to each other, giving to charity, and peace and goodwill. I'm just not really a huge fan of 8-foot inflatable snowmen. In the San Francisco bay area. Um...folks, it has never snowed in our town. Ever. We might get an inch or two dusting the higher peaks in the greater area, but our elevation here is 25 feet. Snowmen? Not so much.

One of our neighbors has red and green blinking lights wrapped around two palm trees. Sure you gotta work with what you got, but palm trees? What makes this especially amusing to me is that they also have a perfectly shaped little pine tree in their yard that got nothing. They actually have what looks like a Christmas tree growing in their yard and it has no lights, no star, no decoration. But their palm trees? Lousy with the lights.

I recall years ago visiting Husband's folks in New Jersey during the holidays. Now they live in garden gnome central. I think they were the only family in the neighborhood without fake deer, plastic wishing wells, concrete geese, or those horrible little jockey figures. One home had a yard paved in concrete and then studded with plastic flowers in pots. It's December and they have plastic daisies and daffodils blooming in their yard.

But my absolute favorite was the house with a huge manger scene. The figures were probably life sized. But what made it truly magical is that a whole flock of pink plastic flamingos was kneeling down honoring the baby Jesus. Really. Pink flamingos on bended knee worshipping a plastic Christ with a glowing head. It was one of the most bizarre sights I've ever seen and I've always been tempted to recreate it.

There's one long street in our town that has a lot of very nice (as in big and expensive) houses and many of them go all out at Christmas. For the most part it's tasteful. Lights around the roof, maybe a wreath, a few well-placed lights amid the shrubs or on the trees. But one house has purple blinking LED lights on the house (that don't all blink at the same time, a nice touch), a 10-foot plastic "snow globe" with Santa inside. Santa is also on the roof, with four reindeer. And Santa 3 is on the lawn, with about a dozen reindeer. And waving from the window (with no reindeer, because they're hard to housebreak) is Santa 4. And, just in case we've already forgotten Santa, Santa 5 is outlined in lights on the garage door. As if that weren't enough, every tree, bush, shrub, weed, and pile of dog poop in the yard has lights. In about a dozen different colors. One tree entirely in red. A green bush. A mailbox wrapped in blue. Yellow posts on the porch. It's like someone poured ugly all over the house.

The words fa-la-la-la-la do not come to mind.