Drive down our street and you’ll see decorations galore. Strings of lights, intricate creations of wire and tinsel, huge inflatable Santas and reindeer and Snoopys and rotating snow globes.
Except for our house, where it remains resolutely dark.
Not out of any dislike of the holidays, really. We like seeing everybody else’s decorations. We just don’t get that motivated to do it ourselves. We have a Charlie Brown tree we stick on a table and that’s about it.
Now Halloween decorations are a different thing entirely. We have an extremely unsettling fake rubber bat that’s been hanging in a tree by our front door for about six years now, perfect for freaking out pizza delivery guys and hopeful religious visitors. True Halloween decorations should not look like decorations. No “Happy Halloween” or cartoon-eyed skeletons for us. Why put up plastic pumpkins when a few heaps of real bones saved from a month of dinners by the front door can be much more disturbing?
Basically, our goal is to become “The Old Bridges Place,” the house in the neighborhood the kids dare each other to approach. Festive holiday cheer, no. Terrifying home decor, yes.
Ho ho ho.