It all started with our neighbors — and it wasn’t even a Christmas display, it was their Halloween decorations. On Halloween Susan and I like to sit on the front porch and hand out candy to trick-ot-treaters. We love seeing all the costumes and hearing the kids laugh and shout “TRICK OR TREAT!” when they run up to the porch. This year, all of our young visitors asked us the same question. “Did you see the Beetlejuice house?”
We had a lot going on this year and didn’t decorate as much as usual. We put Mick Rib (my 6′ skeleton) and Slimer (from Ghostbusters) on the front porch, but that was about it. We didn’t have time to reassemble our 12′ skeleton and we didn’t put up any lights. We didn’t go all out. The people across the street, however, went all out. The house is on a corner and from our porch we couldn’t see everything they had put out, but we could see enough. There was a giant sand worm from Beetlejuice in their front yard. There were flashing lights and loud music. We had been bested, and I don’t like being bested.
“Just say the word,” Susan said, “and our yard will beat theirs for Christmas.”
I don’t think I said a word and I don’t think she was really waiting for me to. Within a week or two, box after box coverer in Chinese writing began arriving from Temu. Sure, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, and all the big stores have Christmas decorations, but Temu sells them for pennies on the dollar. For just a couple of bucks you can purchase rows of plastic candy canes. For five bucks you can get strands of lights that will stretch all the way across your yard.
Susan spent about $300. I believe the term she used was, “we’re going Griswold.”
That’s how we ended up with a yard full of lights, candy canes, Christmas-themed signs, and three large inflatable gingerbread men. There’s the large one relaxing in the front yard, the ninja-themed one performing a flying karate kick near my office window… and then there’s Ginger McHoleHead, a 10′ tall gingerbread man guarding the entrance to our home. 10-foot-tall is just an estimate — the top of his head comes to the top of our gutter, and his top hat extends several feet above that.
Ginger McHoleHead likes (er, liked) to dance in the Oklahoma wind. He came with a variety of plastic stakes, none of which were able to withstand Oklahoma’s wind gusts. We ended up strapping him to one of our porch posts, which kept his belly affixed to the house but allowed his arms and legs to flop around as if he were trying to escape this house of holiday horrors.
Ginger McHoleHead was so large that he blocked our view of the street from the living room. The morning I noticed sunlight coming in the front windows again, I knew something had gone horribly wrong.
The paper-thin nylon this thing from Temu was made with did its best to hang on, but the Oklahoma winds proved too much for him. Either by accident or some form of sick holiday protest, Ginger McHoleHead flung his head down to the ground and ripped a hole in his own head on one of the ground spikes. While his original name was Ginger McHappyHat, this is when he was rechristened Ginger McHoleHead.
Ginger McHoleHead’s fan is still running in an act of futile defiance. On a good day his leg will inflate almost up to the knee, but other than that, he s a goner. If anybody really tall is looking for a Halloween costume next year, I’ll make you a heck of a deal on one.
And so, for now, his icing-covered brethren look on. The other two remain inflated but are secretly hoping for Christmas to hurry up and arrive so that they might make it to the attic and live to inflate another day.
