Source: Washington Post
Around the holidays, if we can find time, my wife and I make a couple of travel mugs of hot chocolate and drive through neighborhoods looking at people’s Christmas decorations. For some reason once the season is over I always forget that the lights are one of my favorite things about the holidays. When I was a kid I begged my parents to get Christmas lights because I envied other houses that had them, and then we did get them and I realized it’s not that exciting to have lights on the outside when you’re inside the house.
Putting up lights and other decorations is a way of sharing the holiday spirit with the community, but it’s also a personal expression. The holidays bring people together but everyone also has their own ways of celebrating. There’s a house I pass every day on my way to work that has a large inflated Santa on one side of their yard and a bear holding a dreidel on the other and it always makes me smile.
I thought even more about the overlap between the individual and the community at the holidays when I read about Diana Rowland, a writer—her books include My Life As A White Trash Zombie and How The White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back and they sound fantastic—who made a Christmas display with dragons in her front yard. And that sounds fantastic too. I love creative decorating and the dragons are also a Halloween-Christmas crossover. The best decorations, I say, are the ones that can multitask.
Anyway Rowland got an anonymous letter from a neighbor:
Source: Washington Post
There’s a lot to pick apart here. Why are the dragons only “marginally acceptable” at Halloween? Since when are dragons “demonic”? And isn’t the real spirit of Christmas, or, for that matter, this time of year no matter what holidays you celebrate, the spirit of joy?
Rowland had the perfect response to the anonymous complaint, too: she put up more dragons.
After all it’s also the season of giving.
I’m no biblical scholar but weren’t there dragons in Bethlehem? I saw her tweets when it happened and it made me very merry!
I’m no biblical scholar either, which may be why I only remember dragons in the book of Revelations, but the important thing is, shouldn’t dragons be able to celebrate Christmas too?
This just made my day!!!! Love this post!!!!
I’m so glad I could help brighten up a cold winter day for you.
I think this post captures the true spirit and meaning of Christmas, Chris. Many thanks.
I think it’s comments like yours, written in the spirit of friendship and giving, that really capture the spirit and meaning of Christmas.
That person just took away the “awesome person of the week” award previously given to the backup Rams running back who came off the street last Wednesday and ran for 167 yards and a touchdown in relief of Todd Gurley yesterday. That’s a hard award to tear away, but that person just did it. Now I want more dragons.
(P.S. the shelves of our living room are lined with reindeer, Rams action figures, and … you guessed it … dragons.)
The good news is even with Christmas over there are still plenty of dragons to go around, and maybe even bright prospects for the Rams. I think we need a special dragon award to give to the “awesome person of the week” although I think we’d need more than one even for every week.