DECEMBER 18, 2023 – I know we live in a neighborhood of very decent people. Or more precisely, “I know we live in a neighborhood of very ‘Minnesota nice’ people”? Either way, the evidence is how local folks react to a particular “yard display” of . . . uh, Christmas decorations. If in the evening you travel up and down the dozen or so long blocks in our quarter of town, you’ll find many tastefully arranged outdoor lights and seasonal ornamentations. Many are downright classy—well-chosen, elegantly hung, artfully matched.
A common feature, I’ve noticed, is proportionality. By way of background, our neighborhood was developed in the 1940s and early 1950s—back when individually pounded nails made in ’Mrca—not staples fired by a staple gun made in China—were the fasteners of choice; sheathing was of real pine boards (Hail to clear-cutting virgin forests!), not OSB (particle board); and insulation was . . . we won’t talk about insulation from those days. The developers of that era saw fit to connect people via sidewalks and relegate cars, refuse containers, and garden implements to backside garages and driveway aprons facing alleyways, thus giving front yards more curb appeal. Homes are not extravagant, but hardly a one hasn’t been nicely upgraded, often overhauled and enhanced with multiple degrees of architectural flare. Given the modest lot sizes—60 x 120 feet—we form a close-knit village. Accordingly, the Christmas decorations in our neighborhood aren’t over-done. They don’t lack in brilliance and appeal but they’re sized suitably to the prevailing house and lot dimensions.
Among us are a good number of people with origins elsewhere—many folks are academics and professionals drawn to the Twin Cities by the University of Minnesota and other nearby fine institutions of higher learning and by a diverse and bustling economy. If you were to inspect the schoolwork collections of these folks, you’d expect to encounter neat papers, good organization, nice penmanship, and plusses next to the A’s—C’s being absent; B’s, very rare. You’d need to inspect, however, because whether our neighbors were born and reared in Minnesota or came from elsewhere, they exude the state’s traditional hallmark of modesty—itself awkwardly denied and downplayed by that very modesty. No one broadcasts achievements and accomplishments; only by clever questioning in extended conversation do you begin to realize what remarkable qualities these people contribute to the village—and the world beyond.
What I find especially impressive about our neighbors is their reluctance—nay, refusal—to besmirch the exception in our midst: the Christmas display that is a caricature of itself; a throwback to the early days of “blow mold” plastic; an eye-popping contrast with the modern LED-lit adornments that visually favor the rest of the neighborhood.
Without going full-on “Minnesota NOT so nice,” I’ve tried to elicit reactions that reflect my own. For example, I’ve pursued the line, “Yeah, this year people have done a really nice job of decorating their homes and yards . . . and . . . uh, how about the place down there with all the . . . uh . . .”
No one yet has taken the bait; no one has responded with the likes of, “Oh my GOSH! Can you believe it? What the hel . . .?” Instead, the universal reply thus far is classically “Minnesota nice,” as in, “Yeah, I can’t imagine where they store all that stuff the rest of the year.”
“Yeah,” I say, conforming to the community standard of politeness, “where would you store it?”
All of which is code, of course, for the more honest, “What the hell?!”
Being very much out of step with the mores of my neighbors, I’ve gone a step further. I’ve furtively taken inventory of the “blow mold” collection and counted no fewer than 56 objects as big as the giant outdoor chess set I encountered years ago in a public square in Salzburg Austria. Crammed onto a 60-foot wide lot are . . . a regiment of Nutcracker soldiers headed by two tall-ranking officers; a Brobdingnagian version of the cheap plastic nativity scene that my mother bought when I was about four, including a cardboard manger with a front platform that folded out with the baby Jesus, a cow, a sheep and the three wise guys (Mary and Joseph were seated just inside the fold-out platform), except the neighborhood yard model comes with angels and and a cow and two sheep facing three camels—one toppled; next to a North Pole sign, Santa in his sleigh driven by the full complement of reindeer affixed to the top of a homemade framework of PVC pipes assembled in such a way as to provide the visual effect of a take-off; on the side in a row, two Peanuts characters with the Grinch—grinning diabolically; in front of that trio, two goofy-eyed llamas clad in Christmas garments; and a bug-eyed elf (far larger than a real one) peeking around a stack of outsized wrapped gifts. Whenever I walk past the display I react the same as I did the day before: “Now what’s going on here?! . . . Oh yeah. A lotta Christmas for everyone.”
And each time I think, “And where do they store all that stuff?”
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
