Art Deco

The decorating season is long and seems to be composed of two different segments, each two months. The first, Halloween (Sept. 1-Oct. 30) has been growing considerably, to the point that a visitor from out of town might believe Galesburg is totally overtaken by fall deco. In fact though I think it's me; all small towns of about this size are into deco. What else is there to do? You have two full months to show the best you can do before you switch over into the Christmas stuff.

At first I thought the fall had overtaken Christmas, but the Christmas deco is still going strong and it will start on Nov. 1, as the fall deco people have long got tired of their pumpkins and skeletons and are ready for some different themes. In a way you can say that Christmas is a little more limited, having only red and green as true colors, and snow, sleds, Santa, and reindeer can hardly compete with the fabulous variety you have in fall. Fall these days has moved beyond skeletons and bats, pumpkins, hay bales, and witches. I sometimes think it's glorifying axe-murderers, and maybe it is, or maybe that's just a reaction to Santa. Do you really want an axe-murderer on your front yard, with all that bloood, for two months? I suppose so, especially if it took you four or five months to make it.

My goal by the way is to start documenting this stuff a little better. If a town goes to all this work to decorate, the least the rest of us can do is pay tribute to it by documenting. I don't think Galesburg is that different from, or better or worse than, towns of similar size; my guess is that this is happening all over. September 1, people are dying to get out there, and they do; it's all they can do not to decorate the other months of the season. But I have noticed, by the way, that flag season now starts at the beginning of May and stretches on well into August.

So what happens in January through April? Mostly people just keep their Christmas decorations up. They went such trouble, especially with the lights, that it's a shame to take them down anyway. You have to have something out there. We have this kind of hanging Santa, I kind of forgot to take him down, and he's there to show our nominal agreement with the idea decorating. Maybe I can't keep up with the Joneses, but at least I can make an effort.