A Jesus carousel?

(Note: I took a photo with my camera phone, but the bluetooth connection is down. Until then, a description will have to suffice.)

Holidays seem to bring out the worst in lawn art tastelessness. Of all the excuses for tacky displays, Christmas is the most abused of those holidays. This year, Wal-Mart is making it possible to put the Grizwalds to shame.

I saw it balanced precariously atop a lawn-and-garden shelf. How they got it there, and how it stayed, I'm not sure, since the thing was huge: A life-sized, inflated, animated carousel with Santa, Rudolph, and Frosty riding round and round. I think it was the sheer size of the thing that gave me pause. I pulled out my cell phone and was just getting ready to take a grainy photo when I noticed a woman trying to get through the aisle I had blocked with the shopping cart I abandoned in a moment of shock and awe. I cleared the woman's path and apologized. "It's just that I was distracted by this THING," I explained, pointing at the thing perched above us.

She shook her head as if she shared my pain. "I know. Isn't it just awful what they do to Christmas? Why, they'd NEVER make something like that for Jesus!"

I froze mid-nod at that last observation. A vision of a carousel-riding Jesus, maybe with Mary and Joseph and the stable animals, flashed before me.

Eat your hearts out, Grizwalds.