Wreathing Havoc

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

It's our last episode of 2018.

We'll be off next week for the holidays.

This week, we're hearing the case wreathing havoc.

Paul files suit against his wife Lizzie.

Paul loves to decorate for Christmas, but his wife Lizzie doesn't.

He wants to add more to their home in order to create some Christmas magic for their kid.

Lizzie thinks their tree is enough.

Who's right?

Who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

I'm not talking about just hundreds of thousands of lights.

I'm talking four million lights.

We see one property that has four million lights.

Most people have never seen anything like it.

I know I never saw anything like it until I saw it.

It was overwhelming.

It took my brain a second just to program what I was looking at.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear them in.

Please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever?

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that the only Christmas decoration he puts up is a multicolor, patterned-lit statue of Cthulhu?

Yes.

Very well.

Judge Hodgman.

At least it's not an inflatable.

Paul and Lizzie may be seated.

Wait, what about a Cthulhu that's like one of those used car dealership flapping guys?

Oh, my dear elder God, Jesse.

Jesse,

you're talking about an inflatable Cthulhu that sits on top of your house and has got arms like those car dealership floppy dudes.

Exactly.

But a bunch of arms.

Tentacles.

Thulu, yeah.

All right.

Jennifer Marmer, shut down the podcast.

We're in a new business now.

Let's get some prototypes going.

We'll be ready for Halloween next year.

Bring us some sailcloth and an industrial fan.

But

in the meantime, oh, sorry, but you finish your thing.

No, I think I'm finished.

I think you just got so excited about

me saying Thulu.

All right.

If I didn't say this already, Paul and Lizzie, you may be seated.

Thank you.

For an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors, can either of you name the piece of culture I referenced when I entered the courtroom?

I'm not even sure I remember anymore.

So, Paul, let's start with you.

I'm going to guess that

that's a passage from Stephen King's It, and it's one of the children describing seeing the deadlights.

Oh,

a moderately deep cut from Stephen King's it.

I appreciate that.

I'll put that in the guess book.

Lizzie, what's your guess?

I will guess it's from the film Deck the Halls.

Deck the Halls.

Is that with Sinbad?

That's Jingle All the Way.

Jingle all the way is what I was thinking.

Is

Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito, I believe?

Oh.

Well, in this case, both and all guesses are wrong.

I'm sorry to say.

I was not quoting a piece of fiction culture, a scripted culture of any kind.

I was quoting Carter Osterhaus.

He is a television personality of home remodeler and currently the host of the great Christmas light fight

Mondays on ABC.

We get no money for that.

Specifically, that was him commenting in an interview on ABC 7 New York yesterday about last night's big heavyweight show.

I had never seen this show.

I'm staying with my friends Paul and Janie.

They're really into it, or at least Janie is, and Paul tolerates it.

Have you heard of this show, you guys?

No.

No.

Actually, I've heard of it, but I've never seen it.

Paul, you should be into this because you want to put up a lot of Christmas decorations, right?

Yeah, well, I want to put up a moderate amount of Christmas decorations.

Come on, for the sake of podcast drama.

So you want to put up four million lights?

I want to put up

something obscene.

Right.

Obscene amount of light.

Because you want to be on the great Christmas light fight.

Yeah, I would love to be on the great Christmas light.

Carter Ooster House goes from town to town town looking at incredibly elaborate Christmas slash holiday light and sculpture and Santa's village decorations and basically just goes, I can't believe what I'm seeing

and then leaves.

And then at the end of it, there's a judgment that is made as to who is best.

And in this case, last night's I'm going to spoil it for you because it was on last night and this is going to air later on.

This old sawmill that had been turned into a, well, I think it was a grist mill.

They're still milling flour there, as they had done since 1850.

But the family that owns it now decked that.

Like the metric by which these houses would be judged were how many hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of lights are there.

Like, you're telling me there's 250,000 lights?

This was 4 million lights.

Wow.

I'm looking at these pictures that I found on internet image search.

and the most impressive one to me here is like exactly the scene that you would imagine with a lot of words like joy, and then there's a Snoopy here, and then there's some snowmen, and there's just seas of lights, and then just in front of it is an enormous white Christ figure.

Like, this is what I have wrought.

It's a weird piece of programming.

Like, you would not know that there's a war on Christmas happening in this country.

The one that I'm looking at is Disney-themed.

Yeah, that was on last night's too.

And it features Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck and Mrs.

Donald Duck.

I can't remember what her name is.

Daisy Duck?

Daisy Duck.

Thank you.

You know, then it features other characters, and I buy all of them as celebrating Christmas.

You know, I just think, you know, Mickey Mouse, he's hanging out at Disneyland doing the Christmas thing.

And then there's a bunch of the 101 Dalmatians, which I don't think they have faith.

But, you know, even a dog could get a Christmas gift.

And then there's just an enormous Aladdin segment that like I'm pretty sure they're not doing Christmas this year

on Aladdin's palace which character is the baby Jesus

it's really hard to say Iago the parrot

so coming back to you Paul and Lizzie

you guys live in the Boston area I understand

I know that because when

we're logging on, I understand you're at the PRX garage there in Alston, Massachusetts, just down the road from Coolidge Corner, my old stomping,

not grounds so much as well-manicured streets.

That's true.

Where do you guys live in that area?

We live about 15 miles southwest of Austin in Norwood, Massachusetts.

Norwood, Massachusetts.

So you had to come into the big city, huh?

What are you going to do after this?

You're going to go see a movie at the Coolidge Corner Theater?

Sadly, no.

Our two-year-old is at a Starbucks down the road with my cousin, so we'll be running back to take her to bed.

I'm glad your cousin is there.

I know the Starbucks.

Well, while we have you in Alston, let's talk about what's going on.

You have a home in Norwood.

You are married.

You have a two-year-old, did you say?

Yes.

And there's a cousin in the picture somewhere.

I know that.

That's what I know so far.

What else do I need to know, Lizzie?

So, yes, Paul and I are married.

We've been married for about three and a half years.

This will be our third Christmas with our baby, even though, or our daughter, even though she's two.

She's still your baby.

Yeah, she is.

She always will be.

So I am Jewish.

I grew up not celebrating Christmas.

And when Paul and I first got together, we definitely celebrated Christmas together with his family, but we never really had representation of Christmas decorations around the house.

So again, we've been living together.

This will be our seventh Christmas living together,

but only our third Christmas tree.

So things really did start to change the year our daughter was born.

She was born a week before Christmas.

So yeah, so that was the first year we weren't really traveling to see Paul's family.

So that was the first year we got a real tree in the house, which I was okay with and have grown to love actually having the tree.

But now that she's older and I think we're both kind of thinking about traditions we want to

give her and celebrate as a family, Paul has started really pushing or

expressed interest in

doing more Christmas decorations, like the stockings and the wreaths and the lights on the outside and stuff,

which I would prefer we don't for several reasons, which of course we can get into.

But that's kind of why

we brought the case to you, Judge.

All right.

So, Paul, what's your portfolio of Christmas cheer now in the house?

We have got,

I would argue, not a lot.

We do have the tree.

I'm not looking for your opinion, sir.

I'm looking for the facts.

We've got the tree, which has lights,

a collection of sterling silver snowflakes hangs on the tree.

Those were, I believe, my grandmother's,

some store-bought candy canes,

and a couple other random things hanging on the tree, I think, that my mom gave us.

How can you even claim to be a real fan of Christmas if you're not making your own candy canes?

I would like to get into candy cane making.

Oh, I know.

Okay, I see where we're going.

Okay, continue.

We've got like a Frosty the Snowman book, which

like sings a Frosty the Snowman song.

Yeah, you sent in several pictures of books, and all the evidence, the photos that you sent in, obviously are going to be at the JudgeJohn Hodgman page at maximumfund.org and also on our Instagram at instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

And I see these pictures of books.

I'm just going to take those off the table.

This might actually help your case, Paul, that these are not Christmas decorations.

They are simply Christmas-themed books on a bare carpet.

That is not a decoration.

We also have the candles.

Oh, yes.

And we've got candles in the windows, but only some of the windows.

So I think there's 12 candles currently.

Right.

And there's probably like 26 windows that

there's 38 windows, Judge.

Oh, okay.

There's 38 windows.

So we're about 20-some candles shy.

Ah, I see this, the photo of your 12 candles, and I see a photo of a single white stocking.

Yep, that's our daughter's stocking that my parents gave us.

It's very adorable, a white knitted stocking, and a single hat with elf ears on it.

Yep, I think my parents gave that to us also.

I see an ornament of a menorah that was just gifted to us.

Um, this Hanukkah from my aunt, uh, which is unusual.

But as of this recording, it is Hanukkah, so happy Hanukkah to you.

Thank you.

Uh, and a box full of assorted uh Christmassy junk that has not been deployed yet.

And a before and after photo of your tree, both before it is decorated and after it is decorated.

And I will say, first of all, nice tree.

I see you have hung the elf hat sort of on the corner of the window.

Is that a tradition in...

I've never seen that before.

No, that's just...

We don't have curtain rods yet, so it's kind of a

little

tooth there that you would hang a curtain rod from that was i don't know i had to put the the hat somewhere right you need to you need to get that hat off the floor somehow and uh i i like this tree i think it's a first of all it's a real tree correct it is a real tree yep it's got very great limb distribution

it is um full without being overly dense I'm going to say I like the tree.

I can't see the whole room, but I don't love the placement.

I don't know why you haven't put it right there in the crook of those two windows.

If you'd like to see what I'm talking about, go over to our Instagram page and you can tell me whether I'm right or wrong.

But I'm going to now turn to you, Lizzie, and say this decorated tree is pretty sparse.

Don't have a lot of decorations there.

You know, I would agree.

Again, this is a new thing in terms of our ornament collection.

Right.

Oh, I thought you just meant Christmas.

I was going to say, I think it's been like 2,000 years.

Probably.

No, it's new for us in terms of having a family set of decorations.

So I agree.

The tree is sparse and has a lot of potential.

I think that if we really focused our Christmas decoration efforts just onto the tree, we can make it something really special and meaningful and beautiful.

And I think ornaments have the opportunity to, you know, mark certain occasions and periods of time.

Paul did mention we've got some from his mother, and many of those were really for our daughter, but like, you know, baby's first Christmas and little shoes and stuff.

So yeah, I think if we got carried away with, okay, we're going to put these garlands up and like get some other lights for outside and wreaths and just kind of spread everything too thin, it might, of course, be overwhelming to us, but also I think really just it could be more powerful way to decorate to just focus on the tree, at least until that does get more filled out over the years.

Now, there are Hanukkah decorations out there.

There are a few.

Tell me what you got.

So we have a menorah that belonged to my great-grandmother.

Yeah.

A single menorah.

So you do not have an opportunity for four million lights?

That is true.

You don't have one of those four million candle menorahs?

The so-called festival of lights.

Yeah,

that's some miracle of the oil.

We could probably get four million lights on the outside of the house.

We're going to get back to you in a second, Paul.

It's not Hanukkah.

Yes, we have one Hanukkah menorah that, again, is a family heirloom.

What is the background of the menorah?

It belonged to my great-grandma Sarah who she immigrated to New York

when she was about 13

from Russia or what is now Belarus

and yeah she acquired this as an adult in New York but it's now mine.

That's beautiful.

Yeah thank you.

So that lives in a hutch with other fragile decorative items during the year and during the Hanukkah season.

We take it out and light it most nights of Hanukkah.

And we also have a large decorative dreidel that was given to Paul and I for our engagement from an old family friend of mine.

Oh, cool.

And that's the blue thing in this photo.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's kind of weird.

It doesn't function as a dreidel, but it's a beautiful painted decorative piece that, again, we kind of store with all the Christmas stuff in this drawer so it comes out just Hanukkah time.

And last year we had this party for our daughter right around,

it was during Hanukkah, it was around her birthday and Christmas, too.

And so my mom

brought up a large, just kind of a lunch bag of

wooden dreidels.

I think she presumed that some of the kids present at the party would take it away.

Yeah, you got a bunch of dreidels in a candy dish here.

In a candy dish.

Again, they're just out because we have them.

Our daughter enjoys spinning them and she likes playing them.

It's a delight.

And that's it.

Oh, and two Hanukkah dish towels, which I didn't include in the evidence because I forgot we had them, but I'm sure Paul will bring that up.

I put out a Hanukkah dish towel on the first night of Hanukkah.

What's on the Hanukkah dish towel?

I just out of curiosity.

That is a embroidered menorah.

Okay.

And the words, happy Hanukkah.

Not an heirloom of some kind.

Not at all.

It was, again, a gift last Hanukkah from another aunt.

How do you you feel about those dish towels?

You know, I am pretty ambivalent.

They lived at the bottom of the dish towel drawer, and I found them.

And there's a towel.

Your Hanukkah display right now is taste.

Okay.

And I don't think those dish towels are

kind of general.

Sounds a little.

Sorry, Aunt.

Oh,

she definitely won't care or listen.

Well, I mean, I'll say that your Hanukkah display is pretty sparse as well, but I grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, and there's a large Jewish community there, and a lot of my friends were in R-Jewish.

I've seen my share of Hanukkah's.

And I would say that in comparison to Christmas, it is not a highly decorated holiday, typically.

Yes.

It is more restrained in its finery.

Whereas Christmas can go hard.

That's true.

And I'm certainly not advocating for more Hanukkah.

I simply want status quo slash invest in the tree Christmas.

And invest in the tree means building slowly a collection of tasteful ornaments.

Yes.

I see.

And definitely we can have more lights.

I know this is actually the biggest tree we have had

by a little bit, but the lights, as Paul pointed out, don't really

could be a little more filled in because now we have a larger tree.

It's a little sparse.

Let's take a quick recess and hear about another show on maximum fun.

Judge Hodgman will talk to Paul about his relationship with Christmas when we come back in just a minute.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, always brought to you by you, the members of maximumfun.org.

Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join.

And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org slash join.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Court's back in session.

You're listening to Wreathing Havoc.

We've heard from Lizzie about her holiday decorating vision.

Now let's get back in the courtroom so Paul can talk about why he loves to decorate for Christmas.

Paul, why is it important to you to add more?

Where did you grow up?

You're not from Massachusetts.

What's your relationship with where you grew up and what Christmas was like there?

I grew up in

Des Moines, Iowa.

This looks very kind kind of Midwestern upbringing.

I wouldn't say that my mom was or that my parents were like insane with Christmas decorations.

Although I think if Lizzie saw it, she probably would say that they were insane with Christmas decorations.

They didn't really do any lights on the outside of the house except for the candles in the window

until maybe I was about like seven or eight years old, I think.

I know that one year, like I just banged my mom enough that eventually she broke down and put some lights on the outside of the house because, like, I had advocated for it so strongly.

Yeah.

On the inside of the house, my mom had like a snowman collection.

I remember she probably still does have the snowman collection, even though she lives in Florida.

They would have a lot of Christmas decorations, Christmas cookies.

I mean, like,

starting from the day after Thanksgiving through New Year's Day,

I remember like lots of Santa Clauses and reindeer and just

all the shows and the whole thing.

I'm not making a judgment here yet.

I'm going to make a judgment here soon.

But, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I always get weirded out when there are too many Santa Clauses around.

You know what I mean?

Because

there's one dude.

Why are you going to have 15 different statues and illustrations?

Often in wildly distinct styles.

Santa takes many forms.

I mean

that Santa is an interdimensional shapeshifter who can get into houses that don't even have chimneys.

That's probably the most plausible explanation of that myth if we were going to translate it into reality, but I don't want to see that happening.

It just depends on what timeline you're talking about, like Spider-Man.

Yeah, that's right.

Yep.

Into the Santaverse.

Yeah.

So there is a lot of Christmas sprinkled around your home growing up.

Yeah, definitely.

But I'm interested in this thing of you demanding or asking for lights on the outside of the house when you were, did you say you were seven years old?

Why did you want that so badly?

You know, we would drive past those houses with, not that would have the four million lights or whatever it was.

Did you ever have a situation, which I've heard about in a number of communities, and it was true in Northeast Philadelphia where my mom grew up, where like there will be one block that is known for the decorations and like all the houses go really wacky?

What I liked about it is there's one neighborhood in Des Moines, and they still did this last time I was there and I wouldn't say it was really wanky it was very tasteful and they would do the thing where every house in the neighborhood would do the thing where you take like the white paper bag or the one gallon milk jug and just put like a tea candle inside yeah and kind of line that down the street candelaria is that what that's called candelaria

i've never seen it done with a gallon jug though i think that's gross paper bag nice

well in iowa they would do it with uh gallon jugs you would go through those neighborhoods in iowa and see those decorated homes that are all decked out with lights all over the place and Cal and Laurie and you're like, someday I want to live in a house like that

and make my Jewish wife live there.

Pretty much.

All right.

Well, I knew that I wanted to have a home that looked festive and merry and bright.

Did you think that it looked cool?

Did you feel light shame?

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah.

I was like, oh man, we just got these candles in the windows and like we got these trees in the yard and there's no lights on any of the trees and like there should be because everyone else has them and like, yeah, definitely.

A little bit of light shame.

All right.

Does this make you feel any differently about his schemes and plans that he's come to me to approve of, Lizzie?

Do you want your husband to feel light shame?

No, but I also don't think there is that pressure around our neighborhood currently.

I think a lot of this, again, is because of our daughter and he wants to kind of recreate that sense of wonderment for

But

you know, I think in those first years that I knew him, like he never decorated for Christmas.

I don't think this is like an internal urge that he needs to do because if it was, then he would have advocated for a tree for those other years before we had our daughter.

He was waiting to see how long you would stick around him.

Oh,

well, I will definitely say that this is not like a deal-breaker situation.

I think we both are in agreement that we're going to raise our daughter with both of our traditions.

and

i think we both agree that the compromise is this somewhere in the middle um but i think where we disagree is is where that line in the middle is and well don't surrender so quickly okay because i mean it's it's for me to judge that is i will order you guys to be divorced if i have to oh so

i learned something from the great christmas light fight you got to keep the stakes high yep keep them high artificially high and also a lot of yelling here comes santa

Oh my goodness, what am I seeing right now?

That's what Paul wants people to say when he walks by your house.

Yeah.

Paul, a lot of this case will be decided on taste.

Okay.

So

tell me what you want to add, your dream holiday scheme.

Okay, here's is what I want.

My plans would be to

put some,

we've got like a side porch, which I think I sent you a picture of.

And I would like to put some garlands up on those.

White lights.

I only want to do white lights on the outside of the house to complement the white lights in the candles.

I want to complete the windows with a candle in every window, or at least a candle in every window that

people would see from the street.

And we've also got like a front porch, but I'd like to put lights kind of around that as well.

We've got a couple of new trees in the yard, which I would like to put some white lights on at some point.

This is all kind of like a five-year plan.

I wouldn't all go out and do this all at once.

But as those trees grow, you're going to spend your daughter's college fund on this

if I have to.

I'll put some lights on those trees in the yard.

You know, Lizzie has talked about putting some evergreen trees in our front yard, which I feel like if you've got an evergreen tree in the wintertime, you've got to put lights on it.

So, you know, I would like to be able to have the freedom that as our outdoor area is improved, that I can make Christmas lights, additions to it as necessary to complement the new additions.

It's like we're going to probably put in like a fence next summer.

And once that fence goes up, I would like to put on some lights and even potentially some wreaths.

I know Lizzie is very anti-wreath for some reason.

I don't get it.

When the poor children come by wanting to sell wreaths to me,

well, not the poor children.

I work at a school.

So like when the kids are selling wreaths, I would like to be able to buy a wreath from them.

You meant poor children, like pathetic children.

Yeah.

Not impoverished children.

Yes, pathetic children, exactly.

I would like to do a Santa ritual with our daughter.

My Santa ritual.

I mean,

I would like to pretend that Santa Claus is coming on Christmas Eve, put out the cookies, the carrot, the glass of milk, and then like put some like fill up the stocking with some stocking stuffers so when she comes down on Christmas morning she can

feel like Santa Claus was there the night before.

Different people do different Santa rituals, John.

So some people will do stocking.

Some people will do a plate of cookies.

Some people will do elf on the shelf.

I would like to do an elf on the shelf at some point.

Spill Santa's blood so that the coming harvest in the next year will be a good one.

Of course.

There's a variety of different Santa rituals.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, this goes back to Saturnalia.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Sol Invictus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I myself, in our family, we take Santa's firstborn.

Let us never forget that this began as a pagan holiday.

It is not a Christian holiday.

It is a pagan holiday to bring light to the longest night of the year by accidentally setting a tree on fire.

Yeah.

Right.

And that's kind of the soul of my argument: all of the

elements from Christmas that I want to use are like not Christian elements.

You know, all the secular parts of the holiday are the parts that I'm really interested in.

So

I don't really see that it being incompatible with any of Lizzie's Jewish Jewish traditions or Jewish upbringing.

And the final thing I would like Lizzie to do is, you know, some of the houses in our neighborhood are decorated in a way that I will admit is not great.

And I think that she shouldn't, when our daughter is around, make comments like, like, ugh, like, oh, that's awful.

What does not great mean?

Tell me about how your neighbors have terrible taste.

There's a few houses where they really kind of like mix the aesthetic.

So they'll have like a cartoon Rudolph next to like a very realistic looking Santa.

Right.

And to me, that doesn't quite, you know, again, they're from the different universes.

The worst are when Spider-Man is there with Batman and they both have Santa hats on.

Yeah, you know, and I'm not trying to do anything like that.

But if we saw something like that and it delighted our child, I'd want her to be able to be delighted by it and not have

her mom saying like, oh, that's bad and that's, that's no good.

So, how do you feel about inflatables?

I would not want an inflatable for myself.

I don't mind them.

For whom would you want one?

For Santa, of course.

Maybe someone around the block so I could drive by it like once a week.

For those who don't know what an inflatable is, it's literally an inflated, large, maybe five, six, seven, or eight-foot-tall soft sculpture of a snowman or a Santa or a sleigh or whatever.

And it's often has a lighting element in it.

The genie from Aladdin.

For example.

And on the great Christmas light fight message boards, inflatables are kind of considered cheating.

They're kind of yard filler.

And I think they're pretty cheap looking myself.

Sorry if you love them out there in the world, but the fact that you said that you wouldn't want an inflatable for your yard makes me turn to Lizzie and say, you know, I know this isn't your thing,

but at least we're starting from a ground level where I, Judge Sean Hodgman, say that Paul's taste is pretty good in this regard.

I would agree with that.

Okay.

Now, Paul, you did also want to add a Cagatillo?

No,

that was something I added.

I came across that in some of the research I was doing, and I was very intrigued.

And I offered that up to you as potentially a suggestion that if you do happen to rule in Paul's favor, that maybe we could have this as well.

So for those who do not know what a cagatillo is, and until an hour ago, I did not know, and my eyes had never beheld this Cthulhu-like horror.

There is a tradition in Spain of decorating the nativity with a cogoner, which is a statue of a man pooping.

That is a lot of different, and I'd seen these before.

It reminds you when you're in Spain, like, oh, this is another country, where traditional taboos about a statue of a man literally squatting and pooping are different than they are in, say, Des Moines, Iowa.

But it is a good luck charm or a good luck figure, kind of mischievous figure fertilizing the earth with his poop.

And then there's another iteration of it, and you said a photo of this from Catalonia called a Cagatio.

And that is a big log with a face on it that kind of looks like it's squatting down, getting ready to poop.

And it's smiling.

And

according to you.

Well,

I was going to blame Paul for this.

But you put this in my brain forever.

You fill the smiling log with sweets, fruits, and nuts, and on Christmas Eve, the whole family gathers, and I'm quoting here, to sing traditional songs during which the log is hit with a stick, and when beaten hard enough, the log will, quote, defecate and spill its contents.

It's like a wooden Spanish poop piñata.

Yeah.

Do you want one of these, Paul?

Did you just type into the internet weird goy stuff?

That would have been good.

No, I think I was just Christmas decoration and things like that.

To just, I don't know, just kind of get a wider perspective on it.

I'm delighted by it.

Yes.

Oh, you won one.

Oh, yeah.

I think it's great.

I'm all about bringing in as many little treasures from different cultures.

So I love that there's a bowl of dreidels there.

I love that we've got a menorah decoration on the tree.

And, you know, if there's going to be a,

a strange smiling look.

I understand.

But you understand where Lizzie is coming from, you know, because she's seen, we've all seen how a Christmas decoration collection can grow and grow and grow and become increasingly this gaudy horde.

Right.

Yeah.

Lizzie, are you concerned that if we start on something, that the line will just get moved and moved and moved?

Yeah, that's part of it.

I think just having objects in our home that are just used for about a month each year and then we have to, you know, put put them away and take them out and like put them up all over the place.

And yes, of course it will grow.

I kind of like the idea of just the ornaments because they are smaller and easier to store and we can just like put them in a drawer.

But yeah, imagining like many, many garlands and lights and also things that like the tree have to be disposed of, like wreaths or garlands that are alive or, you know, used to be alive.

Yeah, what's your anti-wreath bias?

Yeah, I think, again, all of this, I agree that Paula's good taste and that like when I see houses with wreaths and white lights, I think it does look beautiful, but it doesn't look like my house.

And

I think that's part of it too.

Like not just, yes, not just am I overwhelmed by the thought of all this Christmas stuff in my home, but Christmas is such a dominant holiday and piece of our culture that for someone who it didn't belong to you growing up, or didn't belong to me growing up, I should say, I always identified as it was something that wasn't, that I I wasn't a part of.

And I don't have any like negative connotations.

Like it's not, it's not warlike or, you know, I have anger towards this, except for the really tacky inflatables.

I will, I do have some anger towards that.

But it's more just like, I don't know, that, that doesn't feel like home.

And I realize, yes, I joined and made my home with someone who does celebrate Christmas.

But again, I think there's ways we can incorporate it without just the stuff and the decorative.

So, you know, you joked about Paul making his own candy canes.

You know, I wouldn't put that past him.

Just this weekend, he made gingerbread cookies with our daughter.

I would really love to focus on the experiential stuff and make traditions that certainly can have a Christmas focus, but things like that.

His mother has these awesome Christmas cookie recipes that I'd love for us to learn from her.

I could see us like going to the Nutcracker or something like that, especially as our daughter gets older, a town tree lighting, things like that.

I'm open to embracing the Christmas spirit.

I just don't love it to be all over my house.

I think when I come home, I want to,

I want that to feel less Christmassy

because I see it everywhere.

It's all over the place.

And for our daughter, too, you know, I want her to identify with both cultures and

as even a half Jewish person that she is.

You know, it can be overwhelming.

Like her daycare, for example, has a huge Christmas tree and Christmas lights and like 14 wreaths.

And I am fine with that because that's her, this woman's house.

But, you know, she already sees that all day.

It's not like there's,

I don't think she's, you know, missing out on anything just by our home having a big, beautiful Christmas tree and that being it.

Paul, you've heard that, and I don't know whether you've really given this a lot of consideration, both because

there isn't a huge baked-in tradition

of Hanukkah decoration at that level, right?

That the celebration of Hanukkah is much, much less traditionally performative

other than through ritual and food and communion and experience.

It's not decorative as Christmas has come to be in these United States.

Don't you have some concerns about the fact that you might be pushing some of the Jewishness to the margins at this time of year of your family?

Because it's half of your family's culture and tradition

i hear that um but i choose not to listen i i hear that but it sounds like the teacher from peanuts

uh no i mean and i realize i'm coming at this from like a place of uh privilege but um you know to me growing up with the christmas experience i always thought that the entire idea of uh christmas and the christmas spirit was to um

you know welcome the stranger and to give goodness to everyone and to bring everyone in and to open your door to everybody.

To welcome the stranger and shove a bunch of Christmas in their faces.

My understanding was that the true meaning of Christmas was to engage in a fight in the news media over the decoration of coffee cups.

That's a more recent tradition.

That's true.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm a little younger than you are.

So that was part of it.

And then my other thing that I really think and why I think that coming, I realize that maybe Lizzie looks at it and says, you know, that doesn't look like my house when she's coming home and there's lights.

That's a very powerful bit of testimony that she gave.

And I hear that.

But what I would say,

lights at this time of year, as you pointed out, and Hanukkah is the festival of lights, is,

you know, something that goes back to paganism and something that probably is even, you know, deeper part of being human, where like at this time of year, when it's like cold and dark and we don't see a lot of sunlight, that having our world lit up, even if only artificially, you know, helps make us feel

more complete inside.

And that so that when I come home and it's 4.30 in the afternoon and it's already dark, and that's like totally awful, at least I'm coming home at 4.30 and it's dark and my house is lit up and it looks festive and merry and bright, and it makes me feel warm inside.

And that is the thing that I like about it.

And I think that that is something that isn't exclusive to Christmas.

Paul, I have a note here from our producer before I go into my sadness shed to celebrate Sadvent, a la Jason Sims, and come up with my verdict.

If he doesn't bring up his fourth grade story, please prompt him to.

Oh, okay.

When I was in fourth grade, I loved Christmas so much, and my mom was like a

room mother.

And I had like somehow convinced my fourth grade teacher that like the thing I needed to do was to leave like the school Christmas assembly early and like run back to our classroom.

So I did this and like I ran back to the classroom and I dressed up like Santa Claus.

And then when all the kids came back from the Christmas assembly down in the in the gym or whatever, I passed out Christmas treats to all the kids as they came in because I'm that enthusiastic about Christmas.

Lizzie, what do you think about that fourth grade story?

It was so heartwarming.

I love picturing Paul as a little guy.

Yeah, that's so sweet.

That's so sweet.

And had I been in that class, I would have gratefully accepted the treats.

Does it change your mind about the wreath?

Yeah.

I mean, I didn't buy the like wanting to help the poor kids because like he always he also sell like cookies and other random stuff throughout the year.

They're not poor kids.

Yeah, and he also supports his classroom with our personal funds.

So, you know, he doesn't have to buy the wreaths.

I mean, again, I would be fine with a tasteful wreath if

you should order it so.

But

nah, I don't think we need a wreath.

Yeah.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go contemplate by the sadness tree.

I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Lizzie,

would you like to share share any more noises of moderate displeasure?

Yeah, I was worried about that.

Sorry.

Maybe like a...

Oh, oh, like if I saw a decoration I didn't like.

Yeah.

Like, ugh.

Oh, gosh.

In voiceover, this is called efforts.

But this is you recording voiceover for a video game, the premise of which you don't like holiday decorations.

Sounds like a fun game.

Lizzie, how do you feel about your chances?

I'm not sure.

I think I got my point across, but

I honestly don't know how the judge is going to decide our case.

How do you feel, Paul?

I'm concerned that I didn't lay out a specific enough list of demands.

Really?

Are you sure?

And like every Christmas, I'm going to somehow come out without everything that I want.

Can I tell you guys, I just decorated my home for Christmas, which in my house as a relative non-decorator means I went to a big box retail store, purchased one string of icicle-style lights, and hung it over the entranceway to my home.

And I was thinking,

well, I did that.

You know.

What are you going to do?

And then my seven-year-old and my five-year-old noticed that I had done it, ran to the front window in the kitchen, and my daughter said, Oscar, it's the most beautiful thing in the world.

Oh.

Wow.

Anyway, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a second.

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You don't even really know how crypto works.

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Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom to present his verdict.

You may be seated.

Cthulhu blesses, everyone.

So I've heard a lot of testimony, and contrary to Paul's belief, a lot of very specific requests.

A real Christmas list, if you will, of very specific presents that he wants.

And I will say, however, that my worst fear was that I was going to have to be talking to a person whose taste and decorations do not align with mine.

As listeners may know,

I'm not a colored lights person.

I wasn't raised with colored lights and I don't like them.

Your mileage may vary.

I appreciate that.

I do not care for inflatables or the crossing of IP streams, as it were.

I shouldn't have said IP streams.

I meant intellectual property streams, but sometimes Christmas gives us other little gifts,

such as commercial creations like Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and nativity scenes, for example.

I mean, Picolane.

And I I find a lot of that stuff to be tacky.

I think that while 4 million lights, actually the Gristmill with 4 million lights and the great Christmas light fight was pretty amazing, but also a terrifying display of obsession and power hoarding, electricity hoarding.

And, you know, I'm sensitive to these things because lots of times

Christmas decorating in particular is coded to class.

So when I would drive up and down that one block of Mayfair in northeast Philadelphia where my mom's family grew up and lived and saw those super duper highly decorated houses with Christmas lights all over the place and, you know, phony Santas on the roof and so forth.

You know, that's a working class Irish and German neighborhood, at least it was at the time.

Whereas in Brookline, Massachusetts, which is a much more upper, middle class, to affluent class, the decorations would be what might be snobbily called more tasteful or restrained.

And though my family was working class, that's where I grew up and where my taste was imprinted.

You know, if you had come to me, Paul, saying you really needed to have a 45-foot wooden soldier out there, I would have had a different problem as a judge.

But instead, this is not a question of taste, because I think you and I share more or less the same taste.

In terms of lighting, in terms of your aesthetic, I kind of feel and get it.

And I share with you the pleasure in seeing

tastefully deployed lights in a time of extra special darkness, this holiday season of all holiday seasons.

Both literal darkness

because it gets dark so early, as you point out, and existential darkness of the times we live in.

That's how I feel anyway.

But I was quite moved by Lizzie saying that what you describe does not look like her home.

And while I appreciate that your decorations are essentially secular, you made an argument that they were partially pagan, pre-Christian Christmas,

and also just sort of contemporary mythological Santa Claus coming down and eating that cookie.

If you and your wife were both either non-religious or both raised in a Christian tradition, I think this would be a less of a thorny dispute to settle.

But whether you wish to acknowledge it or not,

there is overwhelming the Jewish part of your visual heritage within your house with what are undeniably

Christian, though secular, you know, traditionally Christmas, which means Christian, whether you like it or not, decorative displays is problematic.

And whether Lizzie feels it particularly keenly,

if you are going to raise your daughter truthfully in both traditions and meaningfully in both traditions,

I'm not sure that you want to have a passive display of Christian dominance over the Hanukkah season.

Even though it's beautiful, it codes as Christian.

So I advise, first of all, contemplation on that point and discussion, further discussion as you guys move forward in the celebration of this holiday.

I love Lizzie's idea of focusing on the experiential more than the decorative, making Christmas cookies, etc.

But also, I would trust, and I'm sure Lizzie did not mean to exclude, the various traditions traditions and rituals and contemplations of the Hanukkah season and sharing equal time and equal importance in your house.

I never put up lights.

I never put up those ice cool lights that Jesse Thorne put up in his house.

I never put up anything outside of my house because most of my adult life I never had a house, had an apartment.

Still do.

My restraint in decoration was tree-focused.

Very specifically tree-focused, because I like a Christmas tree.

I like having it there.

I think it provides a lot of delight and joy to me and the children that live with me.

But it also, the reason I never got into decoration wasn't so much philosophical, but even just decorating a tree, decorating requires a lot of bending over and picking things up and putting them on top of something else, which is my least favorite activity.

So I'll do as little as possible.

I appreciate that you want to do more, but there has to be

a guideline, Paul, that you don't do too much.

As you say,

you have some specific wants.

And as you say, every year

at Christmas, you didn't get everything you wanted.

And now that you're a grown-up, you want to have everything you want.

But that's not what Christmas is all about.

Sometimes you don't get that big track programmable space tank that you wanted so badly and asked for.

I never did.

Tim McGonagall did.

Why was that allowed?

Why did Cthulhu allow that injustice to occur?

That has been a point of contemplation for me for the rest of my life, and I'm glad to have that point of contemplation.

And so no,

Santa Hodgman will not give you everything on your list, though you have been very nice and not naughty at all.

I am ordering restraint for this year.

I'm going to be very specific.

You must get more decorations for your tree.

That doesn't look good the way it is.

Get like 10 to 20% more.

You guys both can pick these out.

They don't have to be Christmassy

because there's all kinds of decorations.

Nor do they have to be Hanukkah-y.

But like, Lizzie, you get out there and get some decorations that you like.

I agree that the focus should be on the tree.

That's your starting place.

That is the center point from which Christmas explodes.

You need more lights on that tree as well.

That has to happen this year.

You need to get some window dressings for your windows

because that elf hat looks weird hanging there.

It looks really intentional and part of some tradition that I do not understand.

Like the hanging elf hat as something you do.

I don't know that.

Or else come up with a tradition for that.

So that's the primary thing.

I'm going to say right now.

like dioramas within the house

we're going to put a long hold on that

i'm also going to say something that's going to be controversial to you guys, or to Paul, I think, specifically, but to listeners of the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast, you know my stance on this.

And if you have kids in the car or near you who harbor certain ideas about Santa Claus, you may want to pause this podcast now.

I feel very, very strongly based on personal experience

that teaching children that Santa Claus is an actual being that comes into their home is a lie that suits no one and often is very painful when it is revealed.

I believe that people, if they wish to talk about Santa Claus, should tell their young children that Santa Claus is as real as their favorite characters in books.

That does not mean that you cannot have your cookie and have a little bit eaten.

or tell the story about how Santa Claus comes and leaves presents, but Santa is a character, not a real person.

And you will find that kids' brains can include both of those realities in ways that when it becomes clear to them that it's just a story, they're not traumatized.

The outside of your house, everyone can take a look at it online at our Instagram page, Judge John Hodgman.

It's pretty grim.

No offense to you.

It looks like a dark, scary, haunted house.

And I think that it is okay to light up that house with a minimal amount of purely secular lighting.

And I am talking about you need to supplement those candles, those electric candles,

and put one in all the, at least the street-facing windows.

That will look beautiful.

And Lizzie, if you put those evergreen bushes or, you know, those fir trees in your yard,

you're damn right.

Paul's going to put some lights on there.

I am going to say no wreath.

I don't know why Lizzie hates that wreath, but a line must be drawn.

And there you're going to stop.

Essentially, I'm finding in Lizzie's favor, focus on the tree.

Grow your traditions from there.

Do not try to vomit Christmas all over your house to make up for something you feel you didn't have enough of when you were seven.

You're moving forward and your forward motion must include as much Hanukkah as Christmas.

And you have to work really hard, since Hanukkah doesn't have as many visual signifiers, to make sure your daughter understands that and experiences it.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Go get under the mistletoe and kiss you guys.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Lizzie, how do you feel?

I feel great.

I think this really is a great compromise.

And I'm really kind of excited that Judge Ruled on the Santa thing, threw that in there.

I wasn't even going to bring that up, but I really like that.

Because, yeah, that does kind of creep me out that we would teach her that someone will just kind of come in the house and break in and stuff.

So, yeah, thanks for that one.

Paul, how do you feel?

I feel pretty good about it.

I think that getting the lights.

A few lights on the outside of the house and finishing off the candles and the windows is just what I wanted.

So I feel good about it.

Well, both of you, thank you for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas and Cthulhu take us all.

You too, guys.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

Another Judge John Hodgman case is in the books.

In a minute, we'll do Swift Justice.

First, thanks to Travis Martilla for naming this week's episode Wreathing Havoc.

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Hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H O.

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Yeah, usually they're just pedantic corrections of you, so I guess maybe you might enjoy them a little less.

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I'm glad to know that people are listening and that they care.

So thank you.

You can also check out the Max Fund subreddit.

That's at maximumfund.reddit.com to chat about this week's episode.

We're on Instagram with tons of evidence at judgejohnhodgman.

Follow us there.

This week's episode recorded by Alex Birch at the PRX Podcast Garage in Alston, Massachusetts.

Our thanks to our pals over there at PRX, and a special shout-out to their podcast network, Radiotopia, home of a number of buddies of ours.

Keep up the good work.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Now, Swift Justice, answering your small disputes with quick judgment.

Are you ready, Judge John?

Judge Judgment.

You know, it's a very hard podcast name to say.

I have to admit it.

Yeah.

The Hajj Nonjodgman podcast, it's hard to say, but I'm ready.

John says, here I come.

No, this is John from Garfield.

J-O-N.

Excuse me.

Some members of my family refer to yellow cake with chocolate icing as chocolate cake.

I seek an injunction prohibiting this gross misuse of the phrase.

Bailiff Jesse, this has been something of a long episode, something of a heavy episode.

So I'm not going to go into great depth or detail here because we're, you know, it's the holiday time, the end of the year.

We've all worked hard and it's time to relax and take it easy if we can.

Plus, in five minutes, I have an appointment to go awastling.

Well, fair enough.

So let me get you wassling right out the door and say, Hades, no.

Chocolate cake.

The cake has to be chocolate.

Chocolate frosted cake is chocolate frosted cake.

John, I hope that you are able to lord this over your family this whole holiday season.

Specifically, Garfield Denoti.

That's right.

That's it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJHO or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case too small.

Remember, we'll be off next week.

We'll see you in 2019 on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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