Why it's good that Hanukkah stuff is ugly as hell

Alright, it must be said, the Hanukkah decorations I see around here are the ugliest, clunkiest, most designed-as-an-afterthought-by-the-gimp-in-the-basement pieces of shit imaginable.

Really. That is what I think.

Every time I'm strolling through Target, or doing some casual online shopping for whatever (shoes. It's usually shoes.) or on the off chance that I wander into an actual store sometime between the months of September and January and happen to cross the Holiday Decor aisle or the register festooned with holiday froo-frooiness, I see how Hanukkah has gotten the shaft in the decent decoration department.

And that's once I get past the sub par wrapping paper designs and cheesy clip-art paper plates and Fischer-Price dreidels. Those things I've long learned to live with in their totally-unremarkable-except-for-their-ugliness forms.

But the menorahs? That's where the rubber meets the road for ugly Hanukkah design.

I feel that, when it comes to designing menorahs, the job must have been doled out to someone as a form of punishment based on the results I see for sale in the greater USofA.

There is no way that a sane person, possessing both the ability to see out of both eyes and the aesthetic sensibilities of a diseased rat could create these menorahs unless they were being forced to create them, in the dark, with only a limited number of symbolic references and while at gun point. With the goal of making them as quickly as possible and uglier than the guy's next to him who's already had his arm shot off for making one faintly passable.

May I offer up a few examples?

I may:

Blue base. Blue light bulbs. Star of David. We get it - it's for Jews.

The cat-lovers version, naturally.
Because why wouldn't cats represent a holiday based on the miraculous ability of one day's worth of lamp oil lasting eight days? Now, show me one of these cats with its tail on fire, and we'll talk.

Is this supposed to be a Basque take on the menorah? Wow. Maybe let's not push it.

My favorite of the heinous designs - the Made from Whatever Small Item We Have Nine Of design.

Why must there be so many electric versions? Are we not to be trusted with matches? Will the bulbs burn out automatically in eight days? What about on shabbat? Isn't there some rule against using electricity on the sabbath? I don't know any of these answers.

Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you people is that, even though I am about as unobservant as a Jew can be, I still find it disappointing that in this day and age of aesthetically-pleasing toilets, we can't even come up with a half decent array of Hanukkah holiday decor. And, so help me Hannah (that's a Finny's Mom special quote right there) if I see another deer candle holder being pawned off as a menorah I'm going to punch someone in the fucking throat.

Meanwhile, I've bought exactly zero Hanukkah, or even Any Holiday, themed merchandise in recent memory, save for the cards I put together with the help of Tiny Prints and under the guise of wishing people a "Happy Ski Season!" because I can't even be associating myself with holidays if they're going to look like this.

Thankfully, we'll always have the ubiquitous snowflakes, generic blue paper from the kid's birthday party supply aisle and silver ribbon from the wedding section with which to wrap the festive underwear and socks (what? You don't give your loved ones undergarments for Christmas? Terrible.) Though lately I've resorted to taking the horrifyingly bad wrapping paper and turning it white side out or scrapping traditional wrapping paper altogether and going for the Spanish newspaper some jerk-off keeps tossing on our doorstep.

As it turns out, El Mensajero offers better choices for giftwrap than Target. Something I never would have guessed.

But, hey, as long as all the accoutrement is completely unappealing, I won't have to torture Bubba with trying to convince him that we should have in it our house and that we should celebrate holidays like normal people rather than the way we actually celebrate them.