My family wasn't much into outdoor Christmas decorations when I was a kid, until somebody gave us a creche — half life-size plastic figures of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, lit from inside, with a wooden stable and a little manger.
It was a hand-me-down gift, as I recall, from a devout Presbyterian, a member of the church my dad was serving, who likely thought the minister's home ought to more elaborately note the nativity. This generosity prompted us to lay aside our sensitivity to that Second Commandment warning against worshiping godlike images.
People do tend to follow the biblical injunctions they like and ignore others, you know. But let's not get started on that, or we'll probably end up arguing about gay rights, and it's the Christmas season, when we hope for peace on Earth. We're talking here about holiday lights.
We set up the creche in front of our home, unrolled the extension cord to the garage, plugged it in, and stood back to admire the scene. And then Jesus blinked.
The light of the little plastic figurine went out, then came on again. And again. We couldn't get the baby to stop blinking. We tried jiggling the cord and replacing the bulb. Jesus kept blinking. Electrical short, we figured, finally.
"It's like Big Boy," my dad said, referring to a nearby fast-food restaurant that displayed a giant blinking figure of a smiling burger server. He shrugged, and went back inside.
Maybe people driving past our home thought the blinking Jesus was Rev. Smith's way of advertising the holy birth. And I must admit that on a black winter night, it was kind of cool to see the kneeling figures of Mary and Joseph suddenly blessed with the appearance of the child. A light shone in the darkness, indeed, if only sporadically.
But the Christmas message of reconciliation and hope somehow didn't seem well-suited to the same visual come-on that a burger joint used. I wasn't surprised that the creche didn't make the move when my folks retired to a warmer climate. Pop told me he had dropped it off at a Salvation Army store.
My sensibility about holiday decorations had developed years before that, anyway, partly by what was erected annually just after Thanksgiving at the home of Ferd Frost, in the town where I was born. That was his real name: Ferd Frost. He won the local holiday lighting contest almost every year, Ferd Frost did, and he always stayed ahead of his competitive neighbors by adding something new and more elaborate, until one year when the judges, a panel of business leaders and clergy, seemingly decided he had gone too far by surpassing the tolerable blend of the sacred and the secular.
On Ferd Frost's front lawn, reindeer stood in line behind the wise men's camels, and Santa hovered over the stall of Bethlehem amid a multitude of the heavenly host. Rudolph seemed to be nuzzling a lamb with his bright red schnozzle; elves appeared to be assembling gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Two different strains of music poured out, blending "Hark, the Herald Angels" with "Frosty the Snowman."
You may understand, then, that I developed an aversion to such holiday displays. They seem incongruent with the message you might take from the birth of an impoverished child in a stable in what we now call the West Bank. The whole notion smacks of vanity: "Look at the frivolous display I can afford!" And you know what Pope Francis said recently about vanity? "Look at the peacock," he said. "It's beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth."
Nobody, surely, objects to some pretty holiday lights, like those that adorn the trees in a couple of my neighbors' yards. In fact, I'll be draping a string of clear lights this weekend around a small spruce in front of my home. Christmas tree lights suggest we're in a bright season. Another of my neighbors seasonally shines a spotlight on his white house, like the White House, sort of. That's nice.
But we've come to an era of excess in store-bought holiday decor that makes Ferd Frost's displays seem tasteful. I don't get those inflatable nylon holiday figures, like the 9-foot animatronic gingerbread house with Santa popping out from the shutters (was $249, now $199 at a nearby big box), or the more modest (late-season special: $80.99) "Santa in a Hippie Mobile," adorned with the message, "Make nice, not naughty."
This blow-up frippery is mostly made in China. You have to wonder what those factory workers think American Christmas is all about. There they are, earning on average one-tenth of what a typical American factory worker makes, assembling ugly stuff of no value that they know somehow relates to a holiday linked to the West's dominant religion. That religion being — uh, commerce, one might conclude?
It makes me long for the blinking Jesus. At least its seeming excess was accidental, and its intent was pure.