December 18, 2009 | lists
Now is the winter of our discontent...
Christmas season is here and with it the 200 fires that, according to the US Fire Administration are caused every year by Christmas trees going up in flames. NIST’s Building and Fire Research Lab found that well watered trees are the safest, giving gift recipients a few precious moments to grab the largest and most expensive looking present before running out of the room as the curtains catch fire.
Most Christmas tree fires are due to electrical shorts and this is not surprising given that some people’s Christmas displays rival the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in terms of sheer wattage. The rest are caused by open flames, say from a candle knocked over by someone’s drunken uncle or a lit cigarette flicked at the base of a tree by a teenager who doesn’t want his parents to know he smokes, but who now has bigger concerns.
This is not a PSA for Christmas tree safety, however, but rather a rundown of ghastly seasonal ornaments that would be well suited to a raging inferno.
Last year, we featured some pretty crappy ornaments but it appears that during the intervening year, lead-based paint supplies have run dangerously low as more Chinese factories have come online, flooding the market with with even more ugly retina-singing doo-dads which should be kept away from small children and ideally everyone else as well.
So, in the spirit of giving (and then making completely unrelated trips to the nearest pawn shop), we present our Top 10 Ugly Christmas Ornaments.
10. Glass Hot-dog
Nothing invokes the spirit of Christmas quite like meat slurry, intestinal casings and sodium nitrite rendered in glass. The only thing that could possibly make this worse is if were shatterproof, though we’d be willing to put it to this to the test.
According to the product description, this magical ‘old world’ gift (we imagine Medieval craft guilds offering this up this in jest for an particularly despised lord) is “glittered for you to enjoy and cherish as a holiday heirloom”. If by “cherish as a holiday heirloom”, the people who wrote this mean “sell at a yard sale for 5 cents come spring”, then, yes, it could be used in that manner.
How someone thought to devise a crystalline poop, Mexican flag dashboard key-chain and pass it off as a Christmas tree ornament will be forever left a mystery.
9. Rusty Wallace and Pit Crew NASCAR Ornament
Several questions spring to mind when you cast your eyes to the right:
1. Why are members of Mr Wallace’s pit crew, dwarfs? This would significantly increase pit stop times given the relative size of the wheels, not to mention the ease with which someone so small could be backed over.
2. If your tree did catch fire, wouldn’t it be nice if the pit crew could put it out?
3. If your name is Rusty is it really as career-limiting as one would think? Consider which is more plausible:
a) Adjunct professor in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics, Rusty Johnson, PhD or
b) Rusty Williamson is wanted on charges of drug paraphernalia with intent to manufacture and resisting arrest.
8. Grease Light Up Holograph
According to the description, the ornament “lights up and plays part of ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’. Has holographic pictures that change scenes, a very unique ornament for the Grease fan.”
It is our experience that anything that lights up while playing a song should immediately be hurled down a long flight of stairs or dropped from a balcony.
Two words: ‘Grease fire’.
7. 
Sex & the City High-Heel
In an episode of Family Guy, when Brian is first exposed to SATC he asks “Let me get this straight, so it’s a show about 3 hookers and their mom?”
The show’s major contribution to popular culture was showing how women were capable, much like their male counterparts, of continuing to have anonymous sex and trolling bars at an age a good decade beyond what most people find socially acceptable. If your holiday is this secular, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the notion of a tree and decorate a bonsai.
6. Kane and Stone Cold Steve Austin
In one of the more grisly WWE wrestling gimmicks, Kane was billed as the lunatic asylum-raised half brother of The Undertaker, who burned down the family home, killing their parents and rendering Kane’s face permanently disfigured, necessitating a mask (that is, until the genesis of the gimmick was completely forgotten in true crappy wrestling style and the mask came off years later to reveal a completely normal visage).
Stone Cold Steve Austin meanwhile, was a bald-domed southern roughneck who’d flip the bird to the crowd while getting drunk on cheap beer. Merry Christmas everyone!
5. 
Campbell’s Collector’s Edition (our italics) Ornament
If you bought a hundred identical ones and had them strewn around the mantle, Andy Warhol’s ghost would be proud. A product that contains more salt than the Trans Canada highway in February, and one which, if served on Christmas would mean a reduction by half the number of dinner guests the following year, this ‘collector’s edition’ (we haven’t seen whether the split-pea soup version is equally collectible) retails for $8 US.
As the product description states, it’s ‘Never been displayed’ and we hope this holiday tradition continues.
4. Dunkin’ Donuts / Coffee Themed Ornaments
So far, we’ve come upon Starbucks and Tim Hortons ornaments, the latter an inexplicably popular java shop north of the border named after a dead hockey player, but neither comes close to this, which will soon occupy landfill real estate along with its sugarcoated Styrofoam cousins.
Weigh down the branches of your ‘Tanenbaum’ with this, a franchise that has been sinking neighboring property values wherever a new outlet has opened for more than 5 decades.
3. 
Deer with its Own Hunting Rifle
Teach kids another life lesson after their dreams of a real Kris Kringle have been dashed, by preparing them for the inevitable discussion as to how that plate of venison arrived at the dining room table with a murderous, self-loathing deer ornament.
Hunters are often torn between whether to blend in with their surroundings and go with camouflage and risk “if a hunter is felled in a forest, does it make a sound?” or whether to go with the stand-out bright orange, which means you’re less likely to be in the crosshairs of a drunken companion but more likely to be spotted by whatever ruminant you are hoping to mow down in the woods and tie to the grill of your car.
2. Sharon Osbourne Plush Beanie
“Has no pulls, rips, tears, holes, stains or odors. Smoke free.” This is more than can be said for her famous rocker hubby.
One of the weirder Christmas ornaments we’ve come across, and this is quite an achievement as we detailed a Geisha girl, lady pharmacist and Jon Bon Jovi last year, but there is no denying both the craftsmanship and utter misguidedness of this frightening chatchka.
1. Taylor Lautner
Wrong on more levels than advanced Gran Turismo, you can show off your love for the star of the anemic novel and movie on which it’s based, Twilight. With more copies circulating than asses around the Xerox machine and translated into 37 languages, this shopping mall version of True Blood will remain among the living, perhaps not as far as brainpower is concerned, for the foreseeable future.
With a filmography consisting of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, What’s New Scoobie Doo and My Own Worst Enemy there is no telling how much further his agent will have to drive to land him another role.
Merry Christmas everyone!
that hot dog ornament is the ugliest ornament.
Thought I’d give your post a try…thanks for the heads up!
Fuck you and everything you stand for.