11 Geniusly Ghetto Christmas Decorations
Published Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 11:00:00 AM

I recently noticed that Christmas is in a few days.

As a Jewish person, I'm not necessarily qualified to go too in depth about Christmas (and, if Bill O'Reilly is to be believed, I'm actively working to destroy it)... so I've picked a Christmas list topic that knows no boundaries. That topic: Turning poorness into magic.

Here are 11 jerry-rigged Christmas decorations I've found after an exhaustive search, each of which is ugly... yet beautiful in its own way. Kind of like Moe Szyslak. Or a building by Frank Gehry.

Enjoy the list, and Merry Christmas! (Except to you, Bill O'Reilly. To you, I wish a very happy holidays.)
  1. The shopping cart tree. I mean... if you don't pile up a bunch of shopping carts to create an improved Christmas tree, they're just going to get filled up with aluminum cans or, even lamer, actual groceries.



  2. Bushels of reindeer. It's a tough call what I prefer -- that the reindeer are made out of hay resting on sawhorses, or that the stickman Santa is driving a motorcycle sleigh that has a sidecar. It's a completely ridiculous amalgamation of stuff... but you know if this was in a Christmas movie, some little kid would "believe" and bring back the spirit of Christmas and the reindeer and Santa would come to life. (And, I'm just guessing here, but I think I'd prefer stick Santa to Tim Allen.)



  3. Beer advent calendar. I like this idea for an advent calendar. (Even if it's confusingly out-of-sequence... can they do that?) What would you rather get each day during your countdown to the 25th -- a look at some picture of a miscellaneous Christmas scene... or a bottle of beer? Even beer that's been room temperature for a few weeks gets the win.



  4. The beer bottle trees. And after you drink your advent calendar beers, recycle them into a tree. It saves the environment on the front and back end -- you're not cutting down a tree AND you're recycling. (There are several photos of beer Christmas trees on the Internet, I chose these two because they're well assembled... and I couldn't only show the Canadian Molson tree.)



  5. Ditto. This light display has made the online rounds this year, and it perfectly sums up the ultimate broke-ass Christmas.



  6. The hanger tree. I guess, on some level, this is crafty... the kind of thing you'd see in the one non-gossip magazine that the grocery store puts next to the checkout. On the other hand... making your Christmas tree out of 99-cent store hangers is just way too depressingly Charlie Brown.



  7. The Natty Light nativity scene. Great little details -- the three wise bottles, the napkin over Mary, the Natty Light box crib. I also love that they couldn't even upgrade to Bud/Bud Light/Bud Ice here... they had to make the statement with Natural Light.



  8. The ladder tree. I mean... yeah, it's kinda ghetto, but at least this makes it exponentially easier to get the star on top.



  9. The tire wreath. I'd give them even more credit if they hung it on the door. (Would probably take a railroad stake and do tremendous structural damage to said door... but I'd definitely be impressed.)



  10. The keg pyramid. The thing is -- if you just returned those kegs and got your deposits back, you could afford to buy a tree.



  11. The tampon lights. I tried to write about 15 different jokes about these, but nothing was flowing right.
This list was published on Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 11:00:00 AM under the category Misc.
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