‘Tis the season, Boise High, yet I seem to be lacking the holiday spirit this December. There’s just no jolly to my holly. My family waited until halfway through this month before putting up our tree and any decorations. They help a little with the lackluster Christmas spirit my family seems to be facing, but the problem is, I have very strong opinions on my family’s choice in outdoor Christmas decorations, as well as a personal vendetta against glitter as a whole.

You see, my family goes all out with their decorations. We don’t just do one strand of lights around the door and an inflatable in the front yard. No no no, my dear friends. If our house doesn’t look like the cross between the holiday section of a Big Lots and one of those neon OPEN signs, we’re doing something wrong.

For starters, my house is two stories tall (#flex) and my dad is deathly afraid of ladders. He has this extending pole hook thingamabob that he uses to attach the strings of lights to the row of clips along the gutters. This part always makes me nervous, because I’m just perpetually afraid that his grip will slip and the pole will crash through a window. But that hasn’t happened, yet (knock on wood). Additionally, he somehow manages to get perfectly even loops between the clips, a feat I will never be not impressed by. 

We have twinkling snowflake lights along the tiny bit of roof over our front door. They’re only a little bit tacky, so I guess they’re okay. We also have these two fake shrubs on either side of the door that get knocked over approximately two billion times during the month of December. Usually by the UPS guy, who I think actively tries to hit them when he punts our packages onto our front door step.

The yard decorations are just kind of their own separate deal. My family buys a new one each year, with no rhyme or reason as to why we choose it, which has resulted in an honestly ridiculous amalgamation of nonsense. 

An amalgamation of nonsense that I’ve elected to rank in a school newspaper according to nothing but completely arbitrary criteria.

Starting off with the actually nice ones, we have a pair of metal trees, which are my favorite because they don’t have any glitter on them at all. They do have these big, tacky, round bulbs on them though, that make untangling all of the strands an absolute nightmare. I’m the only one who knows how to set them up, so I’m always tasked with that horror. 

Next up is this year’s newest addition to the ragtag group of winter wackadoodles, the gnome. If there’s anything my mother loves, it’s gnomes. They’re everywhere. They’re slowly taking over our house like a plague. Everywhere I look now, I see the product of a white middle-aged woman’s hyperfixation. I counted the number of gnomes she has specifically for this article. The final number, not including the outdoor one, is thirty-nine.

Next up, we have a white LED tree that I have no memory of us ever owning. It’s pretty forgettable and basic, but hey! No glitter automatically counts as a win!

We have two snowmen, who I’ve ranked consecutively. The first, I actually quite like. He pops up like those round paper lanterns, and it’s a lot of fun to poke him and watch him wiggle. The only downside is that he’s covered in that annoyingly cheap fur that sheds everywhere. The other snowman is…a little bit worse for the wear. He’s older than all of the previous decorations I’ve ranked thus far though, so that’s his defense. You see, he’s quite top-heavy, and is prone to falling over if you even look at him wrong. We used to set up this whole rigging structure with poles and string, but now we just lean him against the fence and call it a day. He’s since been banished to the far corner of our yard for his transgressions. 

There’s a dog in a Santa hat and scarf, carrying a present in his mouth. He’s actually quite cute, and fairly easy to set up, but he has that dumb cheap fur that gets everywhere. The present in his mouth is attached by the ‘ribbon’ of the bow, and immediately ripped off as soon as we took it out of the box. Nothing a little superglue can’t fix, but it’s still annoying. 

There’s also a Christmas llama? I don’t really have an explanation for that one. He just doesn’t fit the theme. Not that our yard has a theme, but you get my point. 

Penultimately, the trio of presents. They’re fine, but the blue one bit the dust this year and no longer lights up at all. The bows on top are glittery, (which automatically knocked them down the ranking) and haven’t stuck to the physical boxes themselves in years. They’re held on by nothing but prayer and twist ties.

Last, and most certainly least, it’s the reindeer-pulled sleigh. I don’t just dislike this decoration, I loathe it. “But Eddie,” you say. “It’s irrational to loathe a Christmas decoration!” Well TOO BAD. For starters, the pieces don’t even fit together. You have to brute-force them into place, which of course just gets glitter everywhere, because of course it’s glittery. And I don’t mean just some glitter, I mean that every single square inch of this thing is covered in glitter. Ultra-fine glitter.

So while some of our decorations are misses, ultimately, my house slays. It also helps that we’re basically the only people on our block who decorate; although our neighbors will probably be the ones laughing when my dad and I have to disassemble that whole mess two weeks from now.