"Your dragon display is only marginally acceptable at Halloween."
December 17, 2018 4:22 PM   Subscribe

Author Diana Rowland likes dragons. One humorless neighbor, it seems, does not approve. You can imagine the response to someone telling you to take down your dragon display, right? Bored Panda write-up if the images don't come through on the other link. Rowland's twitter thread about the matter.
posted by TwoStride (112 comments total) 36 users marked this as a favorite
 
She is a better neighbor than I am, because I would definitely be going full pentagram if I got that note. Possibly with a giant Baphomet statue..
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:26 PM on December 17, 2018 [24 favorites]


This reminds me of the story from a few years ago in a wealthy Boston suburb. An artist put some plastic flamingos in her yard, and when the neighbors complained it was tacky, she encrusted the lawn with them so you couldn't see the grass. I think they made a film out of it. Maybe Diana could get some helium ones to fly over her house.
posted by pangolin party at 4:27 PM on December 17, 2018 [13 favorites]


I mean helium dragons, not helium flamingos!
posted by pangolin party at 4:28 PM on December 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


Her dragons definitely need to meet the dragon on this Marblehead, MA, man's house!
posted by TwoStride at 4:31 PM on December 17, 2018 [10 favorites]


One of the houses in the French Quarter of New Orleans turns into a hellmouth on various holidays. Like, the entire façade is concealed behind a massive papier mache mask of a seasonally-appropriate grotesque visage, with a literal gaping hellmouth through which one must walk in order to access the front door. Everyone loves it.

Sometimes I really miss that place.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:34 PM on December 17, 2018 [11 favorites]


Incidentally, Helium Flamingos is the name of my new art-rock band.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:34 PM on December 17, 2018 [16 favorites]


BARREL RIDER.
posted by clavdivs at 4:44 PM on December 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


For a corralary of this story where everyone is both mega Christian and mega awful see this saga of a terrible man and his terrible neighbors and probably not a terrible Christmas display, but it definitely ain't dragons.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:44 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


god the absolute SECOND some mealy-mouthed whiner tried to bring god into this i would immediately construct an enormous gay dragon manger scene and leave it up year round
posted by poffin boffin at 4:45 PM on December 17, 2018 [81 favorites]


This is absolutely the kind of spite-fuelled absurdity I'd do if I owned a house and will do one day.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 4:47 PM on December 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


Now I am struggling to figure out how one would indicate "gay dragons" other than maybe, like, "they are both wearing neckties"
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:51 PM on December 17, 2018 [17 favorites]


Rainbow bunting. Rainbow scales. Rainbow projected light.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:53 PM on December 17, 2018 [18 favorites]


i was thinking "great big dragon cocks that are rubbin together" but neckties could also be cute
posted by poffin boffin at 4:53 PM on December 17, 2018 [76 favorites]


Rainbow neckties?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:53 PM on December 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Metafilter: "great big dragon cocks that are rubbin together"
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:54 PM on December 17, 2018 [18 favorites]


Oh man, if her neighbor read her books she'd probably really flip out.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:54 PM on December 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm not even a biblical scholar but if this happened to me (and it would not because oh lord inflatable lawn decorations are not my bag) I would track down the note sender just to go full Jesuit on his ass. Inflatable dragons may be ugly as sin, but are not, as a matter of fact, an actual sin.
posted by GuyZero at 4:57 PM on December 17, 2018 [12 favorites]


Couple of those giant blower-powered inflatable tubes, in skin tone, with some painted on hair at the base and some tape near the end to form a glans. Set a few of those up next to each other and let 'em frot.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:00 PM on December 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


I'm given to understand some of the larger options at bad-dragon.com would be just about to scale for the lawn decorations, if we're going that way. And they're available in glow-in-the-dark.
posted by rewil at 5:05 PM on December 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


Rainbow bunting. Rainbow scales. Rainbow projected light.

Tiamat is gay?
posted by vibrotronica at 5:10 PM on December 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Not that there's anything wrong with Tiamat.
posted by vibrotronica at 5:10 PM on December 17, 2018 [23 favorites]


These kind of posts make me glad I currently live in a neighborhood of predominantly recent Chinese immigrants and a HOA that rules with an iron fist.

Guess I'm Scrooge/The Grinch or whatever, but even just regular Christmas lights are too much for me. So much so that when we buy a new house next year, I'm going to wait until the holidays to see what the neighborhoods look like,

That said, giant dragons have as much to do with Christmas as any of the other blowup bullshit people but on their lawns this year.
posted by sideshow at 5:13 PM on December 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


The comment about the "true meaning of Christmas is this judgemental bullshit?" had me laughing but then I was like, wait, Judgement is pretty much God's main job so.. I guess maybe it fits.
posted by some loser at 5:16 PM on December 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


In the late 1970's my cranky grandfather had a neighbor with a rather over enthusiastic and elaborate Christmas display. It was very much akin to Disney's "It's Small World" — an epic and gaudy two acre Swiss Alpine village themed diorama. With Merry-go-Round and Santa driven locomotive. Loud music blared. Lights flashed.

Us kids LOVED it. Local news crews would come out. It was a scene, man.

My grandpa HATED it. Oh. He decorated. The same way every year. Very proportionate and symmetrical red and white lights perfectly placed around perfectly trimmed shrubs. Lights that absolutely did not blink and came on at 8pm and off at 9pm. He was such a pipe smoking old square.

So he complained and raised a ruckus with the neighborhood. Now he LIKED the neighbors. They all got along. They played golf every weekend. But the lights? It was a silent feud that lasted years. Which spurned the neighbors into getting more and more elaborate and crazy with every complaint just to poke fun at him.

Eventually the law got involved forcing the neighbors to tone it all down. No more loud music. Lights off at 10pm. But they put up a giant Grinch display with an blinking arrow pointed at my grandpa's house. Which then made it on the news. There was even a shot of my grandpa in his cardigan tutting on his pipe scowling at the camera crew out the window. It was hilarious.

Long after my grandpa died I learned that the loud noise, flashing lights sometimes triggered his ptsd from WWII. But he'd never said a word about it.
posted by You Stay 'Ere An Make Sure 'E Doesn't Leave at 5:20 PM on December 17, 2018 [129 favorites]


MetaFilter: an enormous gay dragon manger scene
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:23 PM on December 17, 2018 [11 favorites]


Dragons are kind of appropriate for the winter solstice. I'd see if I could find a yellow lighted ball so the dragons could be bringing the sun back from the dark recesses of the cosmos. Harness the dragons to it. I love all the pagan solstice imagery of Christmas: lights, evergreens, wreaths, mistletoe & holly(they bear fruit in winter).

Both my neighbors with bright security lights have stopped leaving them on, which is nice; I'd rather see the stars. I like where I live, but I'd kind of love to live next to Diana Rowland and her dragons.
posted by theora55 at 5:27 PM on December 17, 2018 [9 favorites]


oh actually now i want a manger scene of persephone pegging hades while surrounded by a group of cheering dragons
posted by poffin boffin at 5:30 PM on December 17, 2018 [32 favorites]


Imagine thinking that the more appropriate thing to display at Christmastime was the stick up your ass.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:33 PM on December 17, 2018 [25 favorites]


Dear moderators: the giant dragon dildo link that someone listed above maaaybe needs an NSFW tag in case of Christian officemates or whatever you guys who need NSFW tags have to put up with.
posted by twoplussix at 5:33 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


She put some Santa hats on them, so that should help her neighbors discover their holiday spirit.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:34 PM on December 17, 2018


She's a class act.
Hi, everyone! I've been getting a lot of messages about fundraisers/collections to buy me MORE DRAGONS, but I would much rather any Dragon Army money be donated to a worthy charity of your choice. Let's make this holiday season about joy and charity for all. Thanks!!

posted by theora55 at 5:36 PM on December 17, 2018 [15 favorites]


Looks like I've found a new author to check out!
posted by dawg-proud at 5:44 PM on December 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ahem...I haven't read the other comments yet, but I'll have you know that I have a life sized skeleton standing by my steps, wearing a Santa hat and a scarf, and holding some Christmas lights....and none of my neighbors have complained (to me, anyway). I say Yay, Dragons!
posted by annieb at 5:45 PM on December 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


I would be proud to be her neighbor. I have long wanted to do a lawn Flamingo nativity set but the husband will not let me due to concerns that the neighbors might burn our house down. Our neighbors really aren't that sort of people.
posted by supermedusa at 5:47 PM on December 17, 2018 [5 favorites]




I'm given to understand some of the larger options at bad-dragon.com would be just about to scale for the lawn decorations

Ooof, that needs an NSFW warning. Text about dragon cocks is one thing but... yeow :P
posted by Foosnark at 5:55 PM on December 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Imagine thinking that the more appropriate thing to display at Christmastime was the stick up your ass.

You're thinking of Easter.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:10 PM on December 17, 2018 [12 favorites]


Christmas is truly our most meta holiday.
Merry-mefi-xmas, y'all.
posted by signal at 6:11 PM on December 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


i was thinking "great big dragon cocks that are rubbin together" but neckties could also be cute

I have to admit that makes my thought of putting t-shirts on the three wise dragons that spelled out G-A-Y seem like just dogshit.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:16 PM on December 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


Count me in with the grinches. I've had a pretty bad experience with a neighbor who was using his over the top holiday light display to make money at the expense of his neighbors' sanity, and at this point I have very little patience for the "IT'S MY HOUSE AND I'LL DECORATE IT HOW I WANT, HATERS GONNA HATE" mindset. You live in a neighborhood with other human beings. They have to look at your house every day. I don't care if it's dragons or Jesus stuff or sports stuff or what. If your neighbors are bothered enough to tell you they really hate what's on your front lawn for aesthetic reasons, I just really think digging in your heels is a dick move. The holidays are not in fact just carte blanche to put any enormous crap you want in front of your house.

I agree that the neighbor picked a dumb way to express these objections. But man, be neighborly. Don't mock your neighbors this way to a national audience. You still have to live by them when the holiday season is over.
posted by potrzebie at 6:21 PM on December 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


But they weren't objecting to the fact that she decorated the house- they're objecting that dragons aren't seasonally appropriate. I guarantee you if she'd had an extra jesus-y nativity display, she wouldn't have heard a peep from this neighbor.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 6:25 PM on December 17, 2018 [31 favorites]


who amongst us can truly say for sure that the christ child was not a dromiceiomimus
posted by poffin boffin at 6:28 PM on December 17, 2018 [40 favorites]


Okay so how do we organize to send her neighbours tasty pizza and a friendly suggestion that baby Jesus is speaking to them from the Internet and wants them to chill out?
posted by trackofalljades at 6:30 PM on December 17, 2018


send her neighbours tasty pizza

That and the 21-book Dragonriders of Pern series.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:33 PM on December 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


It doesn’t seem to be online anymore but the Jack Chick-styled booklet about Saturnalia (from back in the inter webs olden days) would be just the thing to pass out to the neighbors.
posted by TedW at 6:41 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


the Jack Chick-styled booklet about Saturnalia

The Internet Archive has, looks like:

Saturnalia
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:48 PM on December 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


If your neighbors are bothered enough to tell you they really hate what's on your front lawn for aesthetic reasons, I just really think digging in your heels is a dick move.
They don't hate it for aesthetic reasons, though. They hate it for theological reasons. And Christians aren't entitled to Jesus-only December displays. You get to decide what the "reason for the season" is for you, but you don't get to dictate that to anyone else.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:49 PM on December 17, 2018 [39 favorites]


If your neighbors are bothered enough to tell you they really hate what's on your front lawn for aesthetic reasons

That's not what happened, though. They hate it for religious reasons. They probably also hate it when people say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." These are the type of people who think that it's offensive whenever someone does something that doesn't cater to their particular religious viewpoint.

It's true that your neighbors could object to your Christmas displays for reasons that deserve consideration. And hey, I'll even grant that sometimes that could have to do to religion. It wouldn't be nice to put up a deecoration that intentionally disrespected a neighbor's religion, for example. But this isn't disrespectful to them, and their problem isn't aesthetic. Their problem is that their neighbor's house is insufficiently Christian.

Imagine what they'd do if their neighbor put up an actual pagan display.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:00 PM on December 17, 2018 [14 favorites]


If your neighbors are bothered enough to tell you they really hate what's on your front lawn for aesthetic reasons, I just really think digging in your heels is a dick move.

Disagree. The dick move is telling a neighbor that you really hate what's on their front lawn for aesthetic reasons. (Unless you, like, know them well, and have the sort of relationship where you can offer unsolicited criticism.)

Because it's none of your business. The suburbs are bland and soulless enough as it is. Let people fly their freak flags. You don't have to like it. It's not your lawn.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:00 PM on December 17, 2018 [35 favorites]


at this point I automatically side against anyone who puts their interpersonal conflicts on the entire internet for everyone to enjoy. this shit is funny until it's not. hope nobody doxes the neighbor, lol
posted by prize bull octorok at 7:14 PM on December 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


All I can say is I'm really glad I'm not neighbors with a whole bunch of you. Sure, it's not my lawn. But being part of a community means sometimes you sacrifice your precious individuality to make other people comfortable. And if you don't want to, fine, but you don't take it to Twitter.

I don't know. I can definitely think of gaudy non-religious displays that this community would be much less supportive of. And it's just never a good look to take a neighborhood dispute national this way. I think everyone involved in this little kerfuffle comes off looking deeply obnoxious.
posted by potrzebie at 7:18 PM on December 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


Dragons = whatever, fine, kind of interesting.

Constantly running electric fan to inflate seasonal decorations for hours or days at a time = really bothers me.
posted by amtho at 7:32 PM on December 17, 2018 [14 favorites]


But being part of a community means sometimes you sacrifice your precious individuality to make other people comfortable.

This is how you get shitty hoa rules where you have to have green lawns in a drought and you’re not allowed a plant on your porch unless it’s in a hanging pot. They create a template based on what’s inoffensive to the most people and everyone has to abide by it.
My opinion is that sucks. I don’t want a home that’s inoffensive to the most people. I want one that I like, as long as it’s not actually hurting anyone. We can have conversations about noise at what hours and how many lights are too much, and special circumstances like PTSD (as mentioned above) but the general “I just don’t like it” complaint isn’t very compelling to me. We all have preferences, and one neighbor’s shouldn’t matter more than my own.
posted by greermahoney at 7:36 PM on December 17, 2018 [37 favorites]


But being part of a community means sometimes you sacrifice your precious individuality to make other people comfortable.

What if the religious display in my neighbor's window makes my other neighbor uncomfortable? Who gets to choose who has to sacrifice? Oh, yeah - whoever has the power, as always.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:41 PM on December 17, 2018 [39 favorites]


At times like this, I like to stop and think about The True Meaning Of Christmas.

Once upon a time, probably somewhere in the middle of summer in the year we now call 4 BC, a man was born who would grow up to say some things about how it sure would be nice if we could be nicer to each other. He may or may not have been the Son of God, but then again he may have also said that we are all the children of God. His words attracted a following, which eventually grew into a globe-spanning religion several hundred years after his death. Somewhere along that journey from "one dude talking about our place in the universe" to "a religion that has been forced upon thousands of indigenous people around the world", in the interest of stamping out previous winter celebrations held around the longest, darkest night of the year, during which people threw big parties and get-togethers and generally spread wealth around to help the poorer folks make it through the long winter, and also occasionally had a lot of sex and praised and thanked their gods for a decent year and propitiated them in hopes of a better next year or at least one that wasn't any worse, and just generally had a brightly-lit, wild party to fight the suffocating blackness that wells up from deep inside when the sun stops coming out, calling one to oblivion, this state religion declared that this man who said some things was born a few days after the darkest night of the year, and that all y'all people celebrating something else were really celebrating him in something that they now insisted was called "Christmas".

So yeah. I'm all for putting some dragons on the lawn to make things festive and bright.
posted by egypturnash at 7:43 PM on December 17, 2018 [34 favorites]


Who gets to choose who has to sacrifice?

Really though it's alright, because - humans being humans - nobody will ever agree on which sort of outdoor decorations are acceptable and which aren't! I say, offend everybody!!
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:46 PM on December 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


Sorry, but I honestly can't imagine a life so entitled and free of hardship that how my neighbor decorates their lawn even registers on my priority list, let alone seems like something worth fighting over.

If you feel like you need/deserve veto power over other people's aesthetic expression in order to feel comfortable, perhaps you're the one who thinks their individuality is more important than getting along with a community.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:48 PM on December 17, 2018 [31 favorites]


The paradigmatic example of a crotchety-old-person bullshit complaint is “get off my lawn”, to the point that it’s frequently used sarcastically to I indicate the speaker considers the self out of touch and overreacting. At the point you’re making the argument that someone should get off *their own damn lawn* you’ve passed the point of self parody and are happily accelerating towards a new home in the land of busybody assholes.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 7:57 PM on December 17, 2018 [21 favorites]


If your neighbors are bothered enough to tell you they really hate what's on your front lawn for aesthetic reasons, I just really think digging in your heels is a dick move.

But that’s not what happened. Her neighbors didn’t tell her anything. Somebody send an anonymous, passive aggressive, god-bothering note. That’s a dick move.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:17 PM on December 17, 2018 [27 favorites]


All I can say is I'm really glad I'm not neighbors with a whole bunch of you. Sure, it's not my lawn. But being part of a community means sometimes you sacrifice your precious individuality to make other people comfortable

You know what? I'm going to be neighborly tonight and sacrifice my precious individuality in order to keep you comfortable.
posted by nubs at 8:21 PM on December 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


>being part of a community means sometimes you sacrifice your precious individuality to make other people comfortable

No, no it does not. Being part of a community means you keep your thoughts about your neighbor's atrocious electric snowman to yourself. Neither you nor I nor anybody we've ever met, or even heard of, would THINK for one second of going to a neighbor's home and saying, "Hey, your rooftop Santa and your weird little praying people and your assorted other bizarre cultural artifacts are giving me nightmares, so how about you stow 'em?" I am more than a half-century on this Earth and I've never heard of anybody doing this.

And let's be clear, though people keep characterizing this as an 'aesthetic objection', there was no aesthetic objection. The note was a bunch of finger-wagging about demonic cults and the "true meaning of Christmas". This was a religious objection by somebody who thought that in the name of Piety and Propriety they would set somebody straight. Fuck 'em and may Santa leave a rock in their stocking.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:12 PM on December 17, 2018 [45 favorites]


may Santa leave a rock in their stocking.

Is that the new Green substitute for a lump of coal? 'Bout time, I say.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:19 PM on December 17, 2018 [14 favorites]


Look, if both my asshole neighbors can play cornhole when I have a migraine (THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. through the walls, for hours), I think they deserve whatever dragons they have coming to them.

Besides the neighbors across the street have concrete dinosaurs in their front bed year round and no one says boo about THAT.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:20 PM on December 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Constantly running electric fan to inflate seasonal decorations for hours or days at a time = really bothers me.

I started thinking about that this year for the first time. How much carbon is being released into the atmosphere in order to generate the electricity to run the fans needed to keep these decorations inflated? I see more of them every year. So that amount is going up every year.

I'm all for decorating your lawn, but maybe choose a different way, one that doesn't heat the planet more and more?
posted by hippybear at 9:28 PM on December 17, 2018 [7 favorites]




And let's be clear, though people keep characterizing this as an 'aesthetic objection', there was no aesthetic objection. The note was a bunch of finger-wagging about demonic cults and the "true meaning of Christmas".

This. She's not getting shit for her dragons being unattractive, she's getting shit for them not being Christian enough. Add the weird veiled threat of "I'll have to teach you the true meaning of Christmas" (whatever that means?) and you've got some really gross religious policing.
posted by taquito sunrise at 10:04 PM on December 17, 2018 [20 favorites]


All I can say is I'm really glad I'm not neighbors with a whole bunch of you.

me too, as you seem to be fine with the fact that these neighbors are going around telling people that they're bad for not being christian enough. if someone told me that i wasn't christian enough i would spend every last penny i had to stage a year round 24/7 production of fiddler on the roof on my lawn. and on the roof obvsly. nothing about my life will ever be christian enough for these kinds of bigots so all i can do is spend the rest of it showing them the error of their ways, as loudly and aggressively and gayly as possible.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:05 PM on December 17, 2018 [62 favorites]


the weird veiled threat of "I'll have to teach you the true meaning of Christmas" (whatever that means?)

I think it means being visited by ghosts until you get a vision of how happy people will be to see you dead and so you realize you should be nice to others so they won't speak ill of you when you're gone.
posted by hippybear at 10:10 PM on December 17, 2018 [11 favorites]


but I'll have you know that I have a life sized skeleton standing by my steps, wearing a Santa hat and a scarf, and holding some Christmas lights

I have a headless clothing store mannequin who has the post of a medusa floor lamp belted around her waist as the main light in my living room - she's clothed to hide the lamp.

posted by bendy at 10:26 PM on December 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


East14thTaco YES!!! I have that book! I swear, I was thinking of it when writing my earlier response. I adore that book.
posted by greermahoney at 10:54 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


So, The Jesus can't tolerate competing mythologies. Except, in my neighborhood, acceptable inflatable Xmas icons include Mickey Mouse and the Patriots' Flying Elvis. Such mysterious ways ...
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:47 AM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


If the neighbor is too cowardly to put their name on their note, I figure it's fine to mock the shit out of them.

(Disclosure: Diana Rowland is a friend of mine, so standard biases apply)
posted by jscalzi at 4:48 AM on December 18, 2018 [27 favorites]


East14thTaco OMG yes! I also adore that book and it's been my go-to baby shower present for all of my friends' first kids for a decade now.
posted by TwoStride at 5:03 AM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Constantly running electric fan to inflate seasonal decorations for hours or days at a time really bothers me.

It's all the Santas and Frosties and twinkely inflatable trees sad and flaccid on the brown, soggy grass amid patches of yellow snow that really puts pee in my Xmas punch.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:08 AM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Yes, this is about theology, not aesthetics.

We lived in Louisiana - northern end, not New Orleans. Would-be theocrats were all over the place.

I served on the region's ACLU board and nearly every proposed case we heard concerned very simple, clear efforts to use public services to proselytize Christianity.

A couple of my students were literally run out of a small town south of Shreveport. Their offense: trying to sell businesses on ads for a regional business magazine. Why was this a problem? Because one of the sample issues had a fortuneteller on the cover (title: "What's in the future for business in our parish?"). QED.
posted by doctornemo at 6:00 AM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


As a long-time homeowner, I live by the saying, "If that's the worst thing you have to complain about your neighbor, be thankful." With that attitude in mind I can put up with the one who parks his bigass truck on his front lawn, the one who plows the snow off his driveway and dumps it into another neighbor's front yard, the one who lets his dog out to come over and harass the squirrels and birds at our backyard feeders.

As for holiday displays - look. It's not year-round, thankfully, and most people doing this tire of it (it is a lot of work) after a few years, so as long as they're not cranking the music or invading your lawn, it's just easier to let them enjoy their seasonal hobby. Could be worse - your neighbors could be stealing your lawn furniture, committing domestic abuse, or vandalizing houses instead of hanging up lights.

Disclosure: I had a bigass Christmas display for about a decade. Was on several holiday limo and tour bus routes 'n everything. I refused to do audio because that would have been too much of an imposition on the neighbors. Otherwise, it was up for a month, and promptly went away right after New Years. Yes, it did draw a lot of traffic, but the vast majority of the inconveniences occurred to me. Lawn displays are an attractive nuisance and you constantly have to patrol to keep people from messing with it and possibly injuring/electrocuting themselves. People also thought nothing about showing up early, pounding on my door and demanding that I either turn the lights on already (they were all on timers), or tell them where I got something that was part of the display. And vandalism is a given.

I began doing Halloween displays and they are so much more fun. Halloween offers much more scope for the imagination than Christmas, and the weather is pleasanter, too. But in time, I gave that up as too much work, too. Now my neighborhood is dark and dreary at Christmas and Halloween. But I still have people stopping by and telling me how much fun! they had as kids coming to my Christmas display or my big Halloween outdoor parties (I made my guests work shifts haunting the yard; trick-or-treaters were welcome to join in). Lots of good memories for a lot of people came from all that craziness.
posted by Lunaloon at 6:01 AM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


But being part of a community means sometimes you sacrifice your precious individuality to make other people comfortable.

Uh, no it does not? Not in any community I've ever lived in. A big reason I chose to live in a city is the go-along-to-get-along mindset. I mean, I don't even live in a dense part of town (we all have yards and everything) and I've got many dozens of neighbors who can see my house. I have no idea what makes every single last one of those people "comfortable" and they don't know what makes me comfortable (I sure as heck was not at all comfortable with the couple Trump signs that sprouted up in 2016). Arranging my life so that no one could possibly be offended by my within-the-bounds-of-the-law individuality is not even possible, let alone desirable. We all have way way bigger fish to fry in our day-to-day than "my neighbor has a lawn ornament I find offensive to my tasteful Martha Stewart middle class aesthetics."
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:03 AM on December 18, 2018 [14 favorites]


But being part of a community means sometimes you sacrifice your precious individuality to make other people comfortable.

I don't see why. Your aesthetic preferences do not get to override mine. It's a different matter if there is excessive noise or light that actually intrudes on your ability to live peacefully in your home. But these are just inflatable dragons.
posted by Mavri at 6:07 AM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


Also, if y'all want to experience some non-Christian religious holiday gaudiness, I invite you to google image search "Chabad car menorah" or it's even harder core cousin, the mobile sukkah.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:08 AM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


This is making me want to buy a house so I can have super gay yard displays, possibly with giant dragons.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:17 AM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


As a palette cleanser I give you the following: US Homeowner Creates 9-Minute Mario Christmas Display Featuring Dubstep And A Flossing Toad [YouTube]
“The display has reportedly been set up in Haltom City, Texas, presumably generating countless stares, grumbles, and general annoyance from almost every other person living on the same street. The show comes complete with its own soundtrack, working simultaneously alongside the visuals, and Mushrooms, a parade of Yoshis, and even a flossing Toad can be spotted throughout.”
[via: Nintendo Life]
posted by Fizz at 6:27 AM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


Last weekend I ran into a guy I know who is plugged in to local politics. He told me there is a mini-drama like this unfolding in our town.

For fall/Halloween, local businesses had a scarecrow contest where a prize was given to the business with the best scarecrow decoration. There were scarecrows all through the business district, and the garden club put one up in the little flower garden around the central clock. The more Halloween-specific ones disappeared early but the harvesty ones stayed up through Thanksgiving. And when the Christmas garlands went up on the lampposts and Christmas lights started appearing, the garden club changed the clothes on their scarecrow, to a Santa suit.

And now people are calling city hall to complain. Because that scarecrow looks like Santa on the cross. When it was wearing overalls and a floppy gardening hat, the pose didn't bother anyone. But when they put a Santa suit on it, it took on a whole new level of sacrilege.

People. LOL!
posted by elizilla at 6:29 AM on December 18, 2018 [21 favorites]


I think there is, or should be, an element of compromise in how we relate to our neighbours, but the line of where you should compromise your own interests lies somewhere pretty far from "Oh no, my neighbours don't like to have to look at my house."

That applies whether we're talking about holiday decorations or what colour your HOA will let you paint your front door.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:45 AM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


Every day I have to pass a giant, hand-painted sign in my neighborhood that reads JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON with a standard White Evangelical Jesus portrait (also hand-painted), and then there's a tinsel-garland divider and under that it says VOTE GOP FOR GOD'S SAKE, and the whole border is done in gold lights and it's literally like 10 feet tall, and on the one hand, I admire its whole 'outsider art' aesthetic, but on the other hand he is probably a huge asshole, and I cannot imagine that slipping him an unsigned passive-aggressive neighbor note would do anything but lead to him staging a demented Gibsonian passion play on his yard until probably Easter Sunday at the earliest, so my angry dude: fly your freaky Fox News flag and thank you for the annual reminder to give your house the very widest of berths.
posted by palindromic at 6:54 AM on December 18, 2018 [13 favorites]


> If the neighbor is too cowardly to put their name on their note, I figure it's fine to mock the shit out of them.
I'd invite them for a talk to explain them that a dragon is a fantasy creature, and that a christmas tree is a bona fide pagan symbol.
posted by farlukar at 6:55 AM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


… but if they won't talk face to face, I guess mocking is fine too.
posted by farlukar at 7:01 AM on December 18, 2018


Don’t really see how Xmas dragons are more obnoxious -or less appropriate- than a giant reindeer with a bioluminescent proboscis.
posted by blairsyprofane at 7:10 AM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


Eh, her Twitter bio:

"Former cop, former morgue tech. Now I write books about cops, morgues, demons and zombies."

Messing with this lady just sounds like a bad idea. No way you're gonna win.
posted by victotronics at 7:13 AM on December 18, 2018 [11 favorites]


Somebody needs to come up with a clever name like the "Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture" one for the differences we see here over the True Meaning of Community.
posted by clawsoon at 7:19 AM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


My favorite thing about Christmas lights (assuming they are not so over-the-top as to be distracting) is that, in the dark of winter, it makes it easier for drivers to see the bend in the road and not drive up into someone's lawn. They can make a handy navigation aid as well.

We are looking at multiple objections here, that conflated as scrooge-ish.

[1] "Your decorations do not adhere to my regligious preferences," and
[2] "Your decorations do not adhere to my aesthetic preferences"
are complaints best kept to oneself.

[3] "Your decorations are bright/loud enough to impinge on my ability to be at peace in my own home,"
is more reasonable, and is something you might even be able to negotiate with a neighbor who isn't an asshole. ("Could we adjust the volume of the music, especially later at night, and point the floodlights away from my bedroom window?")

[4] "Your decorations are bright/loud enough that they're causing traffic jams,"
is even more legitimate, but harder to argue, because most homeowners who do that level want that kind of attention and consider the traffic jams proof they are doing it right. This is the point where the police get involved and everyone winds up looking bad.

In this case, we're looking at a case of [1] probably assisted by a case of [2], at which point the person complaining needs to get over it. That it's an anonymous note rather than a polite conversation shows that, at some level, the person complaining knows they're wrong.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:56 AM on December 18, 2018 [15 favorites]


Somebody needs to come up with a clever name like the "Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture" one for the differences we see here over the True Meaning of Communit

How about “ass culture vs. sheep culture.” Because the simplistic arguments both seem ... simplistic. Your neighbors/other people can always raise the ante and make your life miserable in a ringing positive feedback loop, but just rolling over and being a submissive little cog is soul-crushing. Everyone has to steer their own messy course in society and hope they can keep swerving gracefully between the ditches of sheephood and assie-ness.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:15 AM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


There's a house I pass occasionally that has an enormous Christmas Velociraptor on its front porch, and tbh I look forward to it all year. Anyone who objects to this level of harmless whimsy deserves to be eaten by a holiday-themed T-rex.
posted by nonasuch at 8:18 AM on December 18, 2018 [13 favorites]


I googled the author and found that she "has worked as a bartender, a blackjack dealer, a pit boss, a street cop, a detective, a computer forensics specialist, a crime scene investigator, and a morgue assistant." I'm kind of questioning my life choices, except not really because I'm pretty sure I could not do a single one of those things, but I could do other interesting things. I want to be her when I grow up. Dragons and all.

When my mom was going through a divorce when I was in college (and I'm pretty sure everyone on the block knew about it) she got a nasty anonymous note about how she needed to water her lawn because the ugly dead grass was bringing property values down in the neighborhood. As I recall, it included the phrase "I'm sorry for your personal problems but". I still feel bad sometimes when I think about it and that experience definitely colored how I look at people who send nastygrams (not that I'd have thought they were nice anyway, obviously, but MAN was that low). Also this all went down in 2007 so your property values went down anyway, sucka!
posted by sunset in snow country at 8:20 AM on December 18, 2018 [15 favorites]


I'm 100% with ArbitraryAndCapricious. I'd be out burning a pentagram into the grass, lighting a Yule bonfire and have a display of the Holly King and Oak King battling for dominance on the lawn.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:49 AM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


Also, if y'all want to experience some non-Christian religious holiday gaudiness, I invite you to google image search "Chabad car menorah" or it's even harder core cousin, the mobile sukkah.

The day I learned, as a small and disappointed child, that the legendary mitzvah tank I'd heard so much about was not in fact an actual tank is a day that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:02 AM on December 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


My friend’s neighbors split the difference and have Santa fighting Doc Ock on their front lawn all winter.
posted by jameaterblues at 9:30 AM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


The day I learned, as a small and disappointed child, that the legendary mitzvah tank I'd heard so much about was not in fact an actual tank is a day that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

pursuant to that recent FPP about The Secret Society of Santas, you are now ready to command your own mitzvah tank. your uniform should arrive in the mail in 7-10 business days.
posted by halation at 9:34 AM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


Last night, when driving through the neighborhood, the beau glanced at a neighbor's holiday display and said... "That's a dragon." Having read this thread, I nodded and said it was very seasonally appropriate.
posted by PearlRose at 9:45 AM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]




Well there’s a bait and switch headline.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 11:08 AM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


In a similar and uglier bout of recent NIMBYism toward holiday decorations, in Oregon a black family found their inflatable Black Santa slashed open less than a day after putting it on display in their yard.
Upon closer inspection, Fritz Richard said, he noticed the decorative Santa -- which must be plugged in to stay inflated -- had been slashed.

“Somebody went out of their way to do this,” he said. “Who slashes a Santa?”

While the couple can’t say for sure what the motive behind the vandalism was, they do not believe it was random.

“There are white Santas all over our neighborhood,” Belinda Richard said. “They aren’t getting slashed.”
The original story here is fun because dragons are fun! But there's still a nasty undercurrent of privileged rage connecting "how dare you celebrate anything other than Christian Baby Jesus by displaying dragons in your yard!" and "how dare you celebrate anything other than whiteness by displaying Black Santa in your yard!"
posted by nicebookrack at 11:31 AM on December 18, 2018 [18 favorites]


In other news, I now really want to see a festive display with Black Santa flying in a sleigh pulled by dragons.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:41 AM on December 18, 2018 [11 favorites]


Sacrificing individuality is for paying taxes so there can be public schools, not for reining in lane dragons.
posted by the_blizz at 11:55 AM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


I’m really upset to hear about the Richard’s experience with racist vandalism, nicebookrack, but happy to see that their neighbors are going to support them by also displaying black Santas!
posted by epj at 3:22 PM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


I don't really understand why people like to take a stand on stuff like this. If someone else feels strongly about something that isn't a big deal to me, then I do it their way. I don't sit around judging whether their reason for feeling strongly about it makes any sense or not, or whether they expressed their preference politely enough.

Needless to say, I also don't go around having strong emotions about other people's Christmas decorations, so I guess the whole thing is a mystery to me.

(Also, if I can't tell which of us cares more, I prefer to err on the side of compromising, because it seems like the world works better if people behave like that than if they err on the side of being stubborn.)
posted by value of information at 6:13 PM on December 18, 2018


I am fully in favor of these dragons and support this woman's right to get as ridiculous as she likes with her own damn lawn, and yet I feel just as strongly that this Vermont man who erected a 20-foot-tall middle finger on a pole in his yard because his small town won't give him a permit to build an 8,000-square-foot commercial garage on his property is an entire DeWalt 5-tool cordless starter kit complete with dual batteries and jobsite radio.

Truly, I contain multitudes.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:27 PM on December 18, 2018 [12 favorites]


MetaFilter: an entire DeWalt 5-tool cordless starter kit complete with dual batteries and jobsite radio.

oh, come on! You know someone had to do it.
posted by Naberius at 6:38 PM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


Finger on a Pole? Do you even Festivus?
posted by peeedro at 6:40 PM on December 18, 2018


Do you even Festivus?

Well, it certainly seems some people are airing the grievances with their neighbours.
posted by nubs at 7:17 AM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't really understand why people like to take a stand on stuff like this.

creepy religious fanatacism manifesting as xenophobia, usually.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:12 AM on December 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


I was downtown last night and noticed that the Scarecrow/Crucifix Santa is gone. I guess someone decided it wasn't worth fighting about.

I'm not upset that they caved on it. I mean, it wasn't that attractive, and as long as it stayed up, the poor phone people at city hall were getting an earful. It's not worth their suffering; there's no grand principle here. But I hope whoever was involved in putting it up and taking it down wasn't too sad.

Now I wish I had gotten a picture, though.
posted by elizilla at 11:59 AM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Will my sister be getting The Big Orange Splot at her baby shower? And was that inspired by this posts? Reader, the answer to both those questions is an emphatic yes.

Also, a few amusing things I learned from The Big Orange Splot's Wikipedia page:

1. Pinkwater admitted that many of the illustrations came to him while under the influence of "psychedelics." I will leave the question ast to which psychadellics influenced the man drawing in 1977 as an exercise for the reader.

2. This admission caused the book to be banned from most Missouri schools for most of the 1980s. Supposedly the MO school board has since forgiven the book if not the author.

3.A related link is "Broken Windows Theory" and you which really deserves a lifetime achievement in missing the point.
posted by East14thTaco at 10:14 AM on December 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


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