Inflatable “Decorations” are Newest Tacky Holiday Trend

For centuries, the solstice season has come with special decorations. In Christendom, it has ranged from holly berries and mistletoe (Druidic in origin) to electric twinkling lights (Made in China) on both the tree and the house. This year, there appeared to be a huge number of inflatable, cartoonish snowmen, Santas and reindeer. These tacky things are kept inflated by a fan constantly blowing air into them and are usually lit up by some low-end version of a klieg light. The shops didn’t appear to have an inflatable Madonna and child, but there is always next year.

Precisely why art appreciation classes are necessary comes to the fore every year when the neighbors get out their holiday decorations. The Marxist belief that the proletariat somehow had their souls unencumbered by commercialism (thus, leaving an innate sense of beauty within the working class) turned out to be a big load of piffle. Moreover, the same school of thought says that those in the bourgeoisie inherently have lousy taste, meaning that Hegel-on-his-head goes 1 for 2 here. Most people, truth be told, have mediocre taste at best. Worse, because the holidays are filled with tradition and because the commercialization of Christmas has been around for a couple of generations now, icky commercial crud that should have died out is institutionalized because grandpa and grandma had plastic reindeer in their yard.

A prime example of this is the dreadful barrage of children’s holiday programming. The “Charlie Brown Christmas Special” is a noble and brilliant exception (that the network didn’t like when first offered the piece in the mid-1960s). Yet, any glory from Charles Schultz’s pen is cancelled out and more by the crappiness of the “Frosty the Snowman” cartoon (“Happy Birthday!” has never been rendered more insipid than out of the mouth of the eponymous protagonist). Plumbing even lower depths is the puppetish “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which can make two hours pass like two weeks – and Burl Ives singing “Silver and Gold” helps explain the need for punk rock, Alice Cooper and Run DMC. All of these bits of dross have their origins in the 1960s, and thus, are “traditional” bits of dross.

Still, as bad as TV is this time of year (Thank Heaven the King Family finally moved on), nothing comes close to these inflatable nightmares. They are ugly, they are not cheap to own, and they burn up energy all the holiday season. If Messrs. Bush and Cheney really want an energy policy, they could start by taxing these things at a punitive rate and giving the money to the poor for home heating in the winter.

There may be some benefit to these balloons on the lawn. They may be easy to erect and to store since they are full of air. They might even cover a bald patch in the grass. Next year, though, a noble and wise Christmas wish would be to see the end of these things. They’re enough to make one say “humbug.”

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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