Christmas Display Excess

There is a new trend in holiday decorating here among families that can afford to spend an extra few thousand dollars at Christmas time. It's about decorating for the holidays, not the traditional interior decorating, but exterior house Christmas decorations. There are now companies for a small but growing number of homeowners that will decorate the home with lights, displays animation, whatever the homeowner wants for his house display at Christmas time.
Starting at about $1000 and going up into the $5000 range, the companies will design, install, take down and store all the homeowners decorations so he or she doesn't electrocute himself or fall off the roof while putting Santa's sleigh there. Stats show that decorating companies have done over 100,000 homes this year. But why can't the homeowner put up his or her own decorations? I do it.
Hmmmmm. It's probably because the homes with the most elaborate decorations require special equipment for hard to reach places and require a great deal of time commitment from the homeowner that he or she may not have. Some people like the garish decorations but don't want to spend the time and effort to construct them. And the professionally designed light displays use sophisticated electronics that the average homeowner has no clue about and would never use himself.
Well, that is definitely the high-end market and not appealing to me in any case. The fun of putting out decorations and lights is part of Christmas. I like my imperfect (tacky) display more than the fancy elaborate decorations of my neighbor down the street. He pays one of those decorating companies to come to his house after Thanksgiving and puts up a unique display each year. This year I saw two huge cranes (he has a big three story home) and the construction took all day to finish. It looks much better than mine, but I prefer the "sloppier and tacky" decorations people put up themselves. It's a more natural look than a professionally designed Christmas display. Mine has character and is not too professional looking (but strange looking, I fear) Of course..not spending $1000 extra on a light/decoration display is quite an incentive to do it yourself, too. Tacky isn't so bad when saving $1000.
In Sweden the annual 40 meter high Christmas goat decoration has more trouble staying up than being put up. The goat is a huge straw Christmas monument decoration that has been on display for the past 40 years near Stockholm. But during those 40 years vandals have burned it down more than 20 times.
Not this year! The construction crew has wised up and soaked the goat with flame-resistant chemicals. When the vandals tried to set it on fire the other day, it would not burn. Long Live The Christmas Goat (or something). The pranksters have been foiled so far this year. They may be back though. In the past the goat has been shot with flaming arrows, run over by a car and even had his legs cut off. Just last year the goat was burned to the ground by vandals dressed as Santa Claus and the Gingerbread Man. They were never caught.....It's enough to make any goat kick a little.