more is just more

Our next-door neighbors asked us if they could string Christmas lights all the way around the eaves on our corner of the building. Sure, why not, we said. I didn’t care, so long as I didn’t end up climbing out onto the roof. Well, I thought what they meant by “string Christmas lights” was maybe those drippy icicle-looking lights, hung from the eaves. Turns out these guys are from the “more is better” school of Christmas decorations. They must’ve blown a couple hundred dollars on reindeer and angels and candy canes and about a million feet of garland with woven-in lights. “I didn’t know you were going to so much trouble,” Barb said in her ever so diplomatic way when she went to talk with our neighbor about stretching the bounds of good taste. Our neighbors must have been acting on some weird signal from outer space that’s just above the pitch of our hearing, because just after they covered our building in dripping lights and ribbons, everybody in every other house down the street climbed out their bedroom windows and hung all the Christmas lights ever made in Taiwan across the front of their buildings. The whole street looks the way downtown Green Bay at Christmas time used to look; the only thing missing is animated toys in the windows.