I have a thing colorful, somewhat tacky Christmas decorations. I think I have a gene for it, because my Christmas decor style isn’t too unlike my mother’s. My mother and her ginormous family have a history of decorating their Christmas trees with big multicolored bulbs, shiny garlands and tinsel and mismatched ornaments. My mom has always prided herself in putting up strands of multicolored outdoor lights in the middle of white-light happy suburbia.

I’ve carried on the tradition, perhaps going a bit more over the top than my mother. My tree (real, of course) is probably a twee larger than should be for the space I have it squeezed into and as of last night, thanks to some help from the Modern Beau, it’s decorated to the nines as colorfully and mismatched as possible.

I’ve amassed a pile of multicolored outdoor strands that I’ve put up each Christmas at whichever apartment or townhome I’ve been living in. Last year I purchased what is now the centerpiece of my decor: a light-up snowman. This year, my first in the current townhome, I learned that the powers that be at the complex are holding a lights competition. My old neighborhood in Nashville had one of these too, but the competition was so fierce and a bit too tasteful for my style that it wasn’t worth me competing. This year, however, I decided to enter because doesn’t appear to be much competition.

Or so I thought.

Lo and behold, when I got home from Memphis on Sunday, there down the way a few townhomes whose display might rival that of Clark Griswold’s. We’re talking tree wrapped in multicolored lights, light-up drummer bears and an inflatable merri-go-round. IN FRONT OF A TOWNHOUSE. All of a sudden my lights seem so vanilla.

IT’S ON. (Pictures to follow).