As I recently read Eric's "Rictus Hep, Lighting Consultant" posting, I was reminded of our neighbor's nativity scene. Last November, I guess it was, our neighbors whose front lawn you can see from the side of our house put up the most excessively gaudy nativity scene I have ever seen. They probably do this every year; I personally can only vouch for one so I limit their blame to that liability. Suffice it to say that the display was white trash par excellence. It had a Joseph, it had a Mary, it had a baby Jesus with foil halo, it had a manger (with real hay!), it had manger-esque cute animals, it had shepherds, it had angels, it had Christmas lights around the manger, it had Christmas lights connecting the manger to the house to the roof with the reindeer, Santa Claus, and Frosty the Snowman.
But the master stroke, the focal point of the entire spectacle, the veritable piece de resistance, was the wise men. In the midst of this almost reasonable looking paint on wood nativity scene, they placed three internally lit plastic molded wise men. They glowed. Oh, how the glowed. Throughout November and December, the glowed. Friends would come over and we would point out our neighbor's nativity scene and they would laugh and laugh and then they would stare and stare (as if in a hypnotic trance) at the wise men.
Something had to be done. So one cold Boston night, my roommate Jeremy (the lighting design major at Emerson) and I went out and replaced the light bulbs inside the wise men with blinking bulbs. We timed it just right so that the wise men would chase -- one would turn on and off, then the next, then the next, and the back around to the first. It was hilarious. We almost couldn't walk back home, we were laughing so hard. I laughed because it was the perfect deconstruction of the Christmas materialism ethos and Jeremy laughed because it was funny.
But then, the next day, the horrifying occurred: the neighbors did nothing. The wise men were turned on the next day along with the rest of the display, chasing lights and all. They had not replaced the bulbs, they had not retired the wise men, they had done nothing. The nativity scene was turned on ever January night, and every night we had to face the blinking wise men. To replace the bulbs again would be unthinkable: it would be to reject the penance for our sin, and worse yet, it would be to admit our sin.
Two explanations presented themselves. Either our neighbors had not noticed the change in the wise men, or they had noticed the change and liked it. Each option was pathetic, and each was horrifying. My roommates and I now live in the uneasy shadow of the almost certain possibility that the blinking wise men will reappear in November.