I just saw this on Buzzfeed:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/fjelstud/the-most-awesomely-inexplicable-nativity-scenes
And it reminds me of when I lived in Harrison. I lived in a predominately Italian-American neighborhood where the gardens were impeccably manicured and the properties were always tidy. Except for two houses: the one I lived in and the one at the end of the street. Ours was fine, the hedges weren’t clipped perfectly and there was a saint without a head hiding behind the stoop, but the house down the street…yikes. A mentally-ill fortyish man and his elderly mother lived there. The man was prone to wandering the streets talking loudly to himself, and I saw the old woman very infrequently. However, they did have a nativity scene outside their house. For me, it was the nativity scene of nightmares. I guess the woman had lost the donkey or the cow and had decided to replace it with a large plastic light-up goose, so looming over the Baby Jesus was this enormous Japanese Godzilla film extra of a goose that glowed in the most unholy way. Also, one of the stray cats that hung around this old lady’s house liked to stretch out and nap in the cradle, basically smothering Baby Jesus to death while the nuclear goose looked on. Let me tell you, coming home late at night all alone and seeing that at the end of the block was akin to turning a corner and seeing those freaky-freak twins from The Shining. I have attempted to make an artistic rendering of what it was like:
