UGLY BETTY CONTEST

THE "UGLY BETTY" CONTEST

...and the winnah is...........

This year at Christmas, we decided to follow a little family tradition of driving around town looking at Christmas decorations. At home, we like to visit the residential areas and decide which home has the nicest decorations, then take the homeowners a "prize" (box of candy or something) and tell them how much we enjoyed their efforts.

That wasn't so easy to do here in Joliette. Some of the businesses had decorations, but very few private homes. Most of the ones that were decorated had some sort of a large blow-up scene, mostly Santa Clause, stuck on the front lawn or porch. We wondered why, but as the snow fell and fell and fell, it became evident that anything very lavish would simply be covered with snow by Christmas anyway, so why bother. We decided some of them must go out every few days and move their blow-up ornament up on top of the snow. Others just put them

on their porches, even if they didn't fit.

Our next-door neighbor put this cute little scene on the front lawn in mid-November.

This is how it looked by Christmas! Poor little guy was no-where to be seen. We suppose he may re-appear about April! The apartment on the left is our neighbors'. The apartment on the right is our feeble attempt at some Christmas cheer.

We found it interesting, as we drove about town, that in an area filled with large churches and cathedrals, and with probably 80% or more of the towns and their streets named after Saints, we did not see one single Nativity scene.

Downtown Joliette, however, puts on a great display of lights.

Street after street was decorated with beautiful amber and blue decorations.

We decided, however, that we couldn't award an actual prize to the City of Joliette, and as we looked around the community we saw some pretty "different" decorations, mostly on businesses. So we decided to hold a little different "contest" and award an "Ugly Betty" prize (sadly, the winners will never know they were the winners--we weren't about to tell them!)

This is the "Good Try" winner. This was a HUGE tree, and the HUGE dangling ornaments just looked kind of strange.

This is the "just stick it out there anywhere and get back in the house, it's cold" winner.

This is the "gaudy, and where is the red and green?" winner.


And this, our dear readers, is the "GRAND PRIZE, UGLY BETTY FOR SURE" winner!

This poor old Santa hung out there on the side of this store from November until February, and just so you can see how pleased he was with the situation.........




........We took a close-up of his face! Can't you just tell from his expression that he is thrilled to be there?




So! After all was said and done, we decided that "be it ever so humble," nobody's decorations made us feel as good as our own little tree inside our warm, cozy apartment. So we bought some chocolate 'turtles' and ate them ourselves!




We hope you have enjoyed participating in our little silliness. We enjoyed this "take" on our family tradition, and hope you did too! Merry Un-Christmas! See you next year, Ugly Betty!