Agree or Disagree?: Inflatable yard Christmas decor is tacky
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
No one is throwing these out each year. They aren't cheap. They are very easy to store, not taking up much space at all. They are more environmentally friendly than most holiday decor (fake garland/trees/wresth, hard plastic decor from the 90s, christmas lights) |
Anonymous
Wrong on both counts. I live in a condo, don't have a lawn at all. I don't even own a car. I love how the responses to my post have all been "whatever, you're probably a hypocrite." But I'm actually not. I bet a lot of you talking about how much you love the inflatable lawn ornaments also lecture people about recycling and claim to be environmentalists. But you'll hide behind "but the kids like it!" when you want to buy all your plastic crap from Amazon. Guess what, kids don't understand the implications of filling our lives with a metric ton of plastic waste that must be shipped using fossil fuels to arrive on your doorstep -- it's your job to know that. The "it's for the kids" argument is particularly galling when you realize that the accumulation of all this plastic crap, delivered via the burning of yet more fossil fuels, is precisely what is destroying this planet "for the kids." Anyway, I don't care if I'm a killjoy. You people need to hear this. |
Anonymous
Sure, okay, keep telling yourself that so that you can feel good about the cheap plastic inflatable that was almost certainly manufactured in China by an underpaid worker, shipped across the ocean on a ship burning oil, driven to a distribution center on a truck burning oil, and then delivered to your home by yet another underpaid worker with minimal benefits. I don't like fake trees, wreaths, garlands, or "hard plastic decor" either -- it's all part of the same pile of plastic garbage that is killing the planet. I will admit I have a weakness for Christmas lights but personally don't put them up because I won't buy the plastic. But a few strings of lights that do in fact get used over and over are less offensive to me than the proliferation of plastic garbage on people's lawns and houses every year. Y'all think you're being "fun" but one day your kids are going to be like "hey why did we participate in the murder of the planet in this way?" and you'll be like "we did it... for you?" Like think this $hit through, people. |
Anonymous
|
I do think it's tacky, but I don't begrudge anyone their tacky decor. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to Christmas - I like white lights, real wreaths and garland, red bows.
But it doesn't bother me that others have different preferences! |
Anonymous
You need a valium |
Anonymous
| Tacky wonderful!!! I would never have had them when I was a DINK (no kids), but now? My kids go crazy for those things! I don't care what my neighbors think. I think my house looks pretty good though. I'd rather have neighbors with tons of inflatables than grinches who have zero lights on their houses. |
Anonymous
Tell me where I'm wrong. You can't, so you guys will joke about how I'm no fun. That's fine, it's what shallow people who don't want to be held accountable for their actions do when they can't make a cogent argument, which is always. |
Anonymous
You are being righteous but neither you nor any of us have a good idea of the environmental footprint of most of our decisions. We try to do our best and balance concerns for the environment with other needs. P.S. Out inflatable is recyclable and is a whole lot more environmentally friendly than often taunted environmental solutions like owning crypto, an electric vehicle etc |
Anonymous
very tacky and low class |
Anonymous
|
The typical yard inflatable uses 50-200 watts of electricity per hour of use. Most people deflate them at least some of the time (overnight) but will keep them inflated for at least 6-10 hours so that they get maximum enjoyment out of them (plus they look pretty dumb when they are deflated on the lawn).
If you have a bunch of these, that's a huge uptick in your power usage during the holiday season and I hope you're cutting back somewhere else to try and offset it. Or using solar powered generators in order to be carbon neutral. Christmas lights can also consume a ton of energy (about 25 watts per 100 light strand, and most outdoor displays use a lot more than that). But not as much as the big inflatables, which will be at the tip of the range above. You can also get solar powered light strands, which I highly recommend for outdoors as they also streamline the wiring issues. |
Anonymous
|
Not as tacky as mixing white/clear and colored lights. And mixing the yellow-tinted white lights with the clear, bright white lights. It looks trashy, imo, like you couldn't afford to buy all of one type of light.
The Village at Leesburg shopping center used to be beautiful at Christmastime. They used the same color white/clear lights in all the trees and shrubbery and the same color matched the large decorative pieces they set up for the season. The past few years the shopping center has looked like a trashy explosion of lights. They have the exact same large decorative pieces with white lights and then wrapped all the trees in the center in colored lights. Then the large tree in the center is super bright LED neon lights - so again, the lights don't match the other colored lights in the center. They added giant wreaths to the tree this year that don't light up (from what I noticed) so when the tree's light show plays, there are giant wreath-shaped dark stops. Just a total mess. |
Anonymous
| I'm not a big fan, but one would be ok for me. If others want more - enjoy! |
Anonymous
Lol literally no one has suggested you replace your inflatable yard ornament with "owning crypto" or buying an electronic vehicle, weirdo. Also, I am explaining the environmental impact of your decision to you right now and you are like "no one can know!" Yes, we can know. You choose to ignore it, which is different. One reason this one annoys me is that it's unnecessary. There are environmentally conscious ways to decorate for the holidays. You can decorate with nature (wreaths, collected pinecones, poinsettias, etc), with found objects like vintage sleds or ice skates, with crafts made from recycled and recyclable paper (much more likely to actually get recycled than your PVC lawn ornament and the accompanying air pump), and so on. It's different than yelling at someone for driving a car -- some people need cars to go to work because they don't have access to public transportation, and electric vehicles are prohibitively expensive for most people. But we're talking about holiday decorations. You 100% have a choice between a very environmentally unfriendly option (plastic, manufactured and shipped from oversees, consuming energy the entire time its in use, likely to wind up in a landfill) or an environmentally conscious one. And you are choosing the unfriendly option and justifying it with "kids like them" even though I expect a lot of those kids will like these a lot less when they grow up and realize what their parents did to the planet with their mindless consumption of cheap plastic goods. Also, this thread is full of people who are like "I was unsure about these until I saw my neighbor had 4 of them, so I bought 8!" or "we only had a couple but then my neighbor called them tacky, so I bought 10 more just to spite her!" It's part of this competitive, spiteful, "these are fun and anyone who doesn't think so SUCKS" attitude which is actually incredibly consumerist and makes what could be a small problem into a big problem. If people in this thread were saying "Yeah, we like the one we have and we found a solar powered pump, here's a link" I might not have such a horrified response. But the attitude on this thread is "Yes, more more more let's fill the neighborhood with inflatables specifically to annoy people!" It's no exactly "holiday spirit" and seems to be more about being loud and ugly to one another than celebrating or making kids smile. |
Anonymous
| I LOVE them! Please those with inflatables, don't be discouraged. Your displays make me smile every time I go by. Thank you inflatable display families and God bless!! |
Anonymous
You have no reading comprehension skills. 1. Many things that are touted as environmentally friendly are not. It takes decades sometimes to understand the true impact. The electric vehicle is a classic EXAMPLE of righteous a**holes touting something whose impact they don’t know. 2. You have no idea of other people’s environmental footprint, nor do we of yours. So go get a drink and sit down. |