'tis the season

These thoughts began to cross my mind around Halloween time when I noticed an abundance of inflatable lawn decorations popping up all over the place. There was the traditional pumpkin to go along with my personal favorite which is three ghosts rising out of a cauldron like jack-o-lantern. A new edition this year was Halloween Elmo to go along with the old standbys, Halloween Pooh and Halloween Tigger.

Halloween came and went and then I began to notice inflatable turkeys appearing on lawns. The most popular seems to be the pilgrim turkey or as I fondly refer to it the “turkey in a top hat.”

When did all of this excess decorating become appropriate? Honestly, when I was growing up all my mom did was hang a few cardboard pumpkins in the window. Halloween wasn’t any less special without the presence of a giant balloon on my lawn.

Being festive is great, really it is, but when did decorating for Thanksgiving become customary? How about those giant inflatable bunnies at Easter time? Here in Philadelphia, we love the Eagles so much that we have even found the need to decorate for football season.




At first I thought this was just a regional phenomenon. Surely, people in other parts of the country are far too classy to decorate for the holidays in such fashion. After careful research AKA the Wal-Mart web site, I discovered that in fact people all over the country enjoy these loveable guys.

Now that Christmas time is upon us they are just everywhere!





Even more disturbing is seeing them during the day time when they are in non-action mode. Imagine what is going through the mind of a small child who passes a house with a dead turkey or snowman sitting on the front lawn.





No, frosty isn't dead, he's just resting because night time is when all the fun happens!