Suburban Inflatable Santas: Derisive To Some, Loved By Others

"'Appalling, 'Catherine Bruckner, a traditionalist who decorates only in holly and evergreen, sneered as she stopped her car in front of an inflated Santa playing poker with two shrewd-eyed reindeer in a menagerie totaling two dozen figures. 'It's bad enough to see those things on Halloween. At Christmas, they rise to a level of tackiness that is horrible.'

But the makers of these $69-$300 air-blown lawn decorations disagree. "'The magic of the Airblown is that you buy it, plug it in, and it's ready to go,' said Sharlene Jenner, the marketing manager for Gemmy, a company that first made its mark six years ago with a wall-mounted singing fish known as Big Mouth Billy Bass, and began making Christmas floats soon after. 'You're going to make a big statement without 20 hours of work. It's a lot of decoration for the dollar, in other words."

What's interesting to note is the anecdotal evidence that these types of decorations belong to a middle-class aesthetic. "A grand tour of some of Long Island's most ambitious Christmas displays suggests that the inflatable decorations are scarce in lower-income neighborhoods, but they are also rare in pricier places, where the culture of understatement seems to rule: white lights twined with fresh evergreen sprigs, etc."