Now that Thanksgiving's over, it's time to decorate your house, apartment and/or shack in the woods for Christmas. Maybe you'll keep it simple with a modest Charlie Brown tree and a wreath of holly. Or maybe you'll go all out, with a full Nativity scene in the front yard, a Santa sleigh on the roof and so many red and green lights in your living room it looks like an elf vomited all over. So many options.
Last year, First Lady Melania Trump unveiled her super-creepy White House Christmas decorations. Instead of choosing traditional evergreen trees, she lined one hallway with frosty skeletal trees reminiscent of the White Witch's castle in The Chronicles Of Narnia. And The Overton Hotel in The Shining. As one Twitter user put it, the dour decorations didn't radiate festive holiday cheer so much as "creeping anxiety and a feeling of lingering dread." Some armchair psychologists claimed that Melania used dour decorations to express her alleged unhappiness, giving us a glimpse into her tormented soul.
Well, get ready to have even more nightmares! Today Melania revealed this year's White House Christmas decorations, which include a terrifying forest of blood-red trees. (And you thought The Haunting of Hill House was scary!) On Twitter, people joked that the First Lady painted the trees with the blood of her enemies, and put them up as a warning to others. Don't cross her! Others had fun with the juxtaposition of Christmas cheer and Lovecraftian horror. "Finally we can stop saying “Happy Holidays” and go back to saying 'Beware the blood trees, may they not consume your soul," wrote one Twitter user.
In a video released by the White House, Melania examines the decorations, and at one point, her campaign slogan, "Be Best," can be seen on an ornament. The phrase is the name of her public awareness campaign to advocate against cyberbullying. But when you combine "Be Best," with the 'blood trees,' it seems more ominous, doesn't? One Twitter user imagined Melania using the phrase like how characters in The Handmaid's Tale say "Under his eye."
Remember when Melania wore that jacket that said "i don't really care, do u," when she was boarding a plane to visit separated families at the border? Pepperidge Farm remembers. (She later claimed she was trying to send a message about media bias.)
Some Twitter users had fun explaining Melania's macabre ideas to her decorator.
Well, that's two years in a row where the White House Christmas decorations were pure nightmare fuel. I wonder what the First Lady will come up with next year? Trees entirely made of human bones, with a burning skull as the star? And the ornaments can be the shrunken heads of elves? And the lighting constantly changes between blood-red crimson and total darkness? I can't wait. Be best, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
