With the holiday season, the annual decoration mania has descended upon us.

There is everything from houses with lights tossed on one bush with apparent abandon, plugged in, then left there until spring to houses covered in so many lights they can be seen from the International Space Station.

All that’s missing is some rainbow colored chalk outlines around the bodies.

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In the colder climes, leaving the decorations up long past Christmas is understandable—who wants to freeze to death undecorating?—but here in the land where 50 degrees Fahrenheit is dead of winter, there is no excuse.

I can forgive the procrastinators who, after the effort of decorating, chose to leave them there past the holiday season up to a point. But there is one decoration trend, be it timely or not, that troubles me; inflatable displays varying in size from elvish to full grown T-Rex. 

The displays themselves are fine when they are functional and upright. It’s when, either for conservation of energy or other reasons, they are allowed to deflate.

Rudolph, Santa, Yukon Cornelius, and Frosty all dead on the ground.  Hardly the most joyful of holiday scenes.

Whenever I pass one of these display disasters all I can think of is it looks like a holiday massacre. All that’s missing is some rainbow colored chalk outlines around the bodies.

Please, for the sake of the children, keep them inflated. There’s no need to add explaining another tragedy of our making to kids. We’ve already given them enough.