Tacky Police HQ

There are times when decorations of excess just leave your jaw-dropping. I don’t know what to say about this excess, except to let you see for yourself the Christmas overkill we found near Provincetown, or P-Town, on the Cape earlier this year. The photos look amazing at full size. They are a bit of a jumbled mess at this smaller scale, but perhaps the jumbled mess gives a better feel for exactly what we saw.

One Person’s Tacky is Another’s Treasure. There is no accounting for Good Taste or Bad Taste. Pink Flamingos, Lawn Balls, and Blow Up Plastic Snowmen are one person’s delight. For others, the plasticized culture of Americana is a cause for shame.

This is the place to report your opinions of good and bad taste. We make no claim to speak for all – only for ourselves. The rest is up to you!

Our opinion is that is not so much the use of plastic decorations as it is the use of so much plastic. Americana gone wild is evident in the excess of decorations: the disorganized abundance lacking continuity of themes. The fact that most of this junk is perishable and is made in China only adds fuel to the fire of our expendable excesses. We don’t buy things to last; we buy them because they are cheap.

Our latest log of Tacky comes to us from Austin, Texas, where the best shots got away. But here we have a blow-up Santa in the same yard right next to a plastic creche. On a city square, such a blending of commerce, Christ, and the secular is understandable. On a single lawn, it can be confusing. A plastic baby Jesus is as disposable as a plastic Santa. At least Jesus doesn’t deflate. Another lawn has a Mickey Mouse Candy Cane Christmas.

Contrast our Excess with the simplicity of a Williamsburg Christmas and you’ll see our taste in the natural and the green:

Visit Colonial Williamsburg for Christmas done well.

A German Home Showing Craftsmanship Pride

I suppose we are the way we are because of many factors, but I think I can name a few:

· Our impatient culture ” we want everything quickly, from fast food to short wars.

· Our desire for low prices – we want Wal-Mart Prices and quality we can afford. We won’t pay for craftsmanship if it costs us more than a manufactured product.

· Our uprooted nature ârather than live in towns for generation after generation, our jobs move us from place to place. So, we have no sense of an enduring legacy or attachment to the land. The land is a place we speed by while we are going somewhere else. It is an obstacle to us. Our disjointed families live elsewhere. We travel on roads that mean nothing to us, and many are littered with billboards and neon, and disposing trash on the berm is convenient.

· Our consumer culture – from product packaging to commercials incentives on television, everything is to meant be used and consumed and not to last. The impermanence of things and the plastic packaging that comes with it all teaches us to continually discard.

Yet it is sad to see everything from cigarettes to diapers to soda cans tossed onto the streets of towns and highways. Where is that sense that the neighborhood belongs to us all, and it takes all of us to keep it clean and nice for others?

When we traveled in Germany, I took this photo. What struck us was that in every town we visited, the streets were spotless and clean. Their corporate pride in the public square was evident. This culture was no “throw away” culture of the fast and the careless. It was a culture sensitive to the need to respect the environment, and not in a political way, but in the sense of common courtesy for others. Would that we would not be such a throw-away culture ourselves!