Noel

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, A Santa that looks this creepy!

Ok, now I've learned to let nothing relating to Père Noël throw me off,  but literally, this plastic decoration was enough to make me fear for the sanity of the decorators in our building.  It started out small, just with some garland and tinsel in the hallways, and a few boxes wrapped up to look like presents.  It was actually really cute and understated.  However, with the introduction of this bit of horror greeting me every time I come into the building, it's a bit different we'll say.

I feel like France has kind of a love/hate relationship with Santa Claus.  Of course, I remember my first time in 2004, I came just after Christmas, and feasted my eyes on this vision:

So herein lies the question:  Is Santa going to be breaking and entering, or is he just hanging on for dear life?  It turns out, apparently, neither is the case.  I don't know if it's all over France, but in Bretagne, a lot of the houses don't have chimneys, so Santa comes in through the windows.  I just remember thinking how absolutely insane it looked to have Santa Claus hanging off your house as a decoration.  (As if his being perfectly still in people's yards in the US is somehow more so.  Then again, decoration is always something I've had questions about.)




Of course, I had preparations for this for years in the US.  My mother changes the decorations for her house once a month.  (Seriously not joking here.  She has a different theme per month.)  Christmas though, used to start after Thanksgiving.  Not like, ok we wait a day and change over.  No, seriously, that afternoon when we got back from Thanksgiving dinner when Dad went to work, the entire house changed from turkeys to snowflakes and angels.  My mother never had a shortage of creepily happy santas, snowmen, elves, and reindeer.

The worst was this snowman she had.  It was life sized and she would st it on the stairs.  So there would be sometimes when you would come around the corner and feel like you're being watched.  Nope, just the creepy lifelike snowman sitting on the stairs, peering into your soul with his cold, dead eyes.  Sometimes I wonder if my mother was decorating to be cheery, or if she was actually creating this world of things being so cute they were creepy.  This coming from a woman who used to have a different festive sweatshirt for every holiday, would surprise me a little though.  

Hopefully there's nothing that makes you feel like pyramid head is watching you every time you step outside with your significant other!  Have a good first day of Christmas.