Enormous Blow Up Lawn Santas: Work of the Devil, or Instrument of Grace?

You know what's weird? My dad.

Yep, that's him, with my mom and all their grandkids in this year's Christmas photo. He seems normal enough, doesn't he?

When we were growing up, I guess maybe he would put up outdoor Christmas decorations, but if he did I don't really remember them being all that elaborate. My Aunt Eileen and Uncle Paul, they were the ones that had the lawn pieces that looked like they moved (or did move), the bright candy colors, the whole 9 yards.

But then, I don't know, a couple years ago -- probably as the enormous blow up pieces came into vogue in suburbia -- my dad suddenly lost it.  I'd come home and the lawn was covered in gigantic blow up figures.  For real.  Here's this year's display, from two weeks ago:

I understand it has gotten more elaborate since. And that Santa is 12 feet tall.  Really. That is not an exaggeration.

My sister and I have made a full contact sport of making fun of decorations like this.   When she lived in Illinois we used to drive around the neighborhoods laughing at people's front lawns. (Yeah, suburbs of Chicago, circa 2000, that was us.)  And I guess we always wondered, what in God's name motivates people to do things like this to their lawn?

This house, it looks like you have to do the limbo to even get the door.

But then lately I've been thinking, that's really not a bad question.  What is it that we're doing when we decorate like that?  I suppose for some of us it's just another form of stimulation -- as if smart phones, the internet, demanding bosses and crying children aren't enough.

But I wonder if sometimes what we're doing is trying to create our own little sacred space -- that is, a little place which draws us in and focuses us.  The Nativity creche is our own version of this -- whether on our lawn or under our tree, it creates a little world of its own that we can enter into, a place removed from the ordinary hubbub.

Am I crazy to think that more secular decorations might emerge out of the same impulse?

Ok, maybe not this.  (Seriously, this could give people with pacemakers a stroke.) 

But maybe this?

It's still busy, but there's something, isn't there?

The horrible thing about the Christmas season is so much of it is stressful and hurried through.  If we would just slow down a bit, maybe take a night to drive through the lights of our city, even amidst the Santas and the Frostys and the Rudolphs we might very well find that quiet space that we so desperately seek.

Ok again, maybe not here -- which looks like a photo from the end of the entire delegation at the end of  an animated G20 summit.  But you know what I mean.