A few Christmases ago our house and all of it’s cheesy Christmas decorations were featured on the 5:00, 6:00, and 11:00 news, but not because of our bad taste in design. We were “victims” in a story about  a local football coach who took middle schoolers out to vandalize holiday decorations. One station even called what he did to a neighbor’s yard “Christmas porn” and told viewers that we had a blow-up doll in our yard.

Uhm, not unless you were counting baby Jesus in the blow-up nativity set.  I blogged about it at the time. Looking back, I can see that I learned a lot of things from that event;

1) We’re all capable of screwing up.

2) It’s weird to have the media camped out in your front yard with your house as a backdrop for the live remote they’re doing for the 11:00 news.

3) You can’t trust the media to get the quote right. Sometimes they can misattribute your name to something someone else said — not that you necessarily disagree with what was said, but just that you would have said more eloquently.

4) Sometimes those misattributed quotes will get national attention. And business aquaintances from other states will hear about it on the radio. And that gets weird.

5) Our yard was really tacky!

This year we’ve upgraded our appearance.

We hired a professional landscaping/property management company to design and put up our lights. And apparently, it’s much better. We used to get calls from our neighbors to turn down the tacky music on the singing Christmas trees, now we get emails saying, “Wow! You’ve really outdone yourselves. Thanks for dressing up the neighborhood!”

But we also get calls from friends we haven’t heard of in awhile. Andre and Laura didn’t recognize our house when they drove past it because the blow-ups were missing. Though we hadn’t talked to them in a year, they made a special call to mourn the loss of the cheesy collection we had going.

My son misses the big blue blow-up soldier, and still wants to find a place to put out the three singing trees. I have to admit, it was always fun talking about how Santa, Frosty, and even Jesus, Mary and Joseph, looked a little tipsy (those blow-up never stood up straight!).

My husband hated putting (and trying to keep) them up a so much, that most of the neighborhood knew it was the season, not because of the Christmas carols he played, but because of his Christmas cussing. They’d help contribute to his Christmas joy frustration by having drunken parties at their house where they waited until we went to bed and then they’d sneak over and install a new blow-up in our yard while we were sleeping.

That was my first enounter with the toy soldier–the Sunday morning I got up extra early for church because I was teaching Sunday school, snuck quietly down the stairs so I wouldn’t wake my family up, and then screamed my brains out when I saw this six foot blow up staring through my window. (They’re much scarier when you’re not expecting them!)

So which do you prefer? The yard with all the blow-ups or the professional lighting? And what’s your Christmas yard look like? Any favorite Christmas yard decorations you can’t part with though you know you should?

~Jennifer

One is a satellite truck that I suspect will begin a live remote from my front yard in less than an hour. (Now I know what Drew Petersen feels like. Okay, maybe not, but at least I wish we had replaced the curtains on the front-door windows after we painted so we could walk past them without being seen.)

Why are the trucks here?

Bad judgment.

Those of you who know us, know that each year we seem to add more kitsch to our crazy yard collection. We currently have five large blow-ups (Frosty, a Nutcracker, Santa and Rudolf, and yes, a nativity scene). We also have three trees that play music and offer a coordinated light show, and we have the usual lighting on trees, bushes, and rooftops. Until last Saturday night, we also had a blow-up Christmas tree.

Around ten o’clock last Sunday morning as we were getting dressed for church, a local dad who is also a part-time football coach came and apologized for his son and some friends who during the night had damaged our tree beyond repair. While a couple of kids sat in his truck, he stood at our door and took full responsibility. I thought it was a bit strange he wasn’t making the kids apologize and I found it even odder when the kids didn’t return later that afternoon as he replaced our tree with an oversized blow-up Christmas bulb. Had my son done something like that I would have made him do the hard, humbling work, and I would have stood behind him as he did.

However, we later learned why the kids weren’t there. They weren’t the only ones who were at fault.

In an effort to bond with his sixth grade team, it is alleged that he loaded the kids into the back of his pick-up truck, drove them across the street from his wealthy subdivision into our middle class neighborhood, and allowed the kids to wreak havoc on our neighborhood Christmas decorations.

When a neighbor caught and confronted him, his alleged response was direct, “You caught me. I guess I didn’t use good judgment.”

Turns out we actually know the dad. My son and his son played on the same team last year. His catering company donated food to a rather large football event and it was so good I considered hiring him for some things we had planned. And just the week before, my husband had actually run into him and his son at a walk-through-Bethlehem event at a local church.

But now, as a result of not using good judgment, he is being charged with criminal trespassing, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and reckless conduct.

This man has had to undergo some very humbling experiences–apologizing to victims, explaining his actions to the players’ parents, spending a short time in jail, and suffering the humiliation of having his mug shot shown again and again in local news in stories like this one.

It is weird to sit in your house and know that just outside they are editing videos and piecing together interviews that involve your story.

The 11:00 news. Live from my front yard.

This is the second local station to pick up on the story and they were much more concerned about the sixth graders putting lighted reindeer in compromising sexual positions. Apparently the parent-coach is no longer cooperating with police (probably on his lawyer’s advice) and the neighbor who caught him in the act quoted him as saying he was “just trying to have a little fun.”

A little fun. A little bad judgment. A whole lot of consequences.

As I watch from the window while the news team packs up their equipment, I am thankful that my house was on TV only because it made a good backdrop, not because I did something wrong. I can’t even imagine the shame and guilt of hiding out in your own house while the media peers through your windows.

Yet, neither can I imagine finding out that a coach would in any way encourage such activity with kids who were placed in his trust.

In the end, we’re not the victims. Just like the coach, we’re people who are capable of acting without thinking, people who want a little fun, and people who regularly make bad judgments. This incident is a reminder that not only should we walk through Bethlehem, but we should take some of it home with us. And pass that on to our kids.

Our tree may have been cut…but let’s hope it wasn’t the kids who were scarred.

~Jennifer