How do your Christmas decorations rate?

Steve has already put up the Christmas lights on our house.

*This is NOT a picture of our house! (It's Clark Griswald's house in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and it rates a Burl Ives on the Fletcher Festive Christmas Lights Scale...read on for details.)

But it WOULD be our house, if Steve had anything to say about it.

Every year I have to restrain him, and every year I find my power over him in this way growing smaller and smaller. I have always been able to put my foot down and say, "Absolutely NO inflatables! No animatronics! No flashing reindeer or speaking Santas!" He complies, but every year he sneaks off to Lowes and buys something new to add to last year's stash...

This year it was a row of light-up Santas that line the border of the walk way up to our door. (I would have taken a picture, but Isaac broke our camera.) True...they are small, but tacky none-the-less, AND one step closer to that gigantic man-size snow globe the kids have been coveting from the yard of another overzealous decorator.

And every year we can be sure to get a few phone calls from neighbors that go something like this:

Phone rings.

Jenn: Hello?

Neighbor: Hello, this is the Iowa City Power Company calling to tell you that you have exceeded your quota wattage for the year and that we have had to sap the wattage from the rest of the city to compensate.

Jenn: Ha ha.

Anyway...

So here is Steve's Festive Christmas Light Rating system. It has been in place since before we were married, as he and his brothers designed it in their infancy. Every year we drive around town and rate houses based on this particular scale from least festive to most festive:

10. Scrooge

9. The Grinch

8. Burgermeister Meisterburger

7. The Heat Miser

6. The Winter Warlock

5. Hermey the Elf

4. Frosty the Snowman

3. Rudolph

2. Santa

1. Burl Ives

This scale takes into consideration a host of things: effort, economic standing, neatness, creativity, etc., etc. One year he gave a Scrooge to a home in a very wealthy neighborhood that only managed to put a skimpy green string of lights on only one bush. So, apparently it is better to do nothing, than to tease Steve in such a fashion. And clearly, as they were so very wealthy, they could have done more. In more modest neighborhoods, Steve gives bonus points for actually making the effort to put lights in a tree, and one could even rank as high as a Santa for lighting up the mailbox. A Burl Ives ranking not only requires an absurd amount of lighting and tackiness, but must also exhibit a reckless disregard for personal safety in the name of Christmas cheer.

Steve rates our house a Rudolph this year, which I thought was a bit generous of him, as I told him, to which he pointed out certain considerations that must be taken into account, such as the time restraints of his job and the financial limits, having to pay for four children on merely a resident's salary, until in the end I was forced to concede. And so it goes with all of the homes to which we rank. Negotiations and deliberations must be made.

And I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to all of our future neighbors for the future Clark Griswald-ish display they no doubt will dread every winter.

And to our current neighbors? You have me to personally thank for reining him in. It could be worse. Much, much worse!

PS...To our dear neighbors and friends (the Goodsons), we award a Santa for such a stunning tree lighting! The risk of bodily harm was evident, and the effect is both symmetrical and beautiful. Well done!)