Top 10 Tapped Out Holiday Decorations

07. Cherub Topiary (Valentine's Day)

So you think that the cherub is the symbol of Valentine's Day, love, chocolate candy, and flowers? Think again!

Oh sure, they make a great topiary decoration and they have somehow been attached to the holiday of love, but they were originally numbered as the second most powerful (and feared) angels in the heavens!

Angels were not always benevolent and protective beings beautiful and well-meaning... In fact for most of the early books of the Hebrew and Christian scripts in addition to being the messengers of Divine Word they also happened to be the right hand of God - when He meant to smite you, that smiting generally came at the hands of the angels He dispatched to do the job!

You might want to bear that in mind next Valentine's Day and skip the Cherubs in favor of flowers and chocolate... Just saying, you would not want to give your beloved the wrong impression.

06. Homer Snowman (Christmas)

Popular culture has the snowman being a whimsical creation that is something of a tradition in pretty much every culture where it snows -- in fact variations of the story of Frosty the Snowman appears practically everywhere! But 40,000 years ago putting a magic hat on a snowman so that they could dance around and entertain children was not quite what their builders had in mind...

Giving this a grain of salt, since there are no definitive history books from the period, learned members of the archeology and anthropology communities now believe that way back then the frigid creations were used for a completely different purpose.

The currently dominant theory is that they were built as a sort of display of presence; that they were meant to mislead persceptions of the population of a village or encampment, but not for the reasons you are probably thinking...

If you were thinking that the snowMAN was created to suggest that there were more warriors present than there actually were, well, no, not at all. That's because they were decidedly feminine snow sculptures!

According to evidence left carved here and there and the odd instructional statue, highly idealized female forms were the shape that snowmen took -- and scholars suspect that these snowwomen were created to suggest a level of prosperity and economic security (which translates to lots of girls and women in the tribe, the source of life if you will) in order to psych out the neighbors!

These female snow sculptures were the stone-age equivalent of the wood and rubber fighter jets that were used during the cold war to convince enemy satellites that there were more forces on a given base than there were -- with the glimpse of the very feminine curves meant to suggest that the village had an abundance of, well, shapely females.

05. Jack-O-Lantern (Halloween)

The practice of visiting a farm or a farm stand to obtain a pumpkin of a suitable size and then carving it as a decoration called a 'Jack O’ Lantern' while very popular in America, actually has its roots elsewhere - specifically the Emerald Isle!

That's right, this well-loved holiday decoration actually originates from the Irish folktale about a man called 'Stingy Jack' -- though in Ireland they used either turnips or potatoes to create their Stingy Jack O' Lanterns -- but when they arrived in America the Irish immigrants went with the pumpkin for obvious reasons. It is bigger, easier to carve, and you still get edibles out of it!

According to the legend, a bloke named Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink, but as he did not choose to pay for the drinks, using his silver tongue he talked the Devil into turning himself into a coin that Jack would use to pay for the drinks.

After the Devil changed, Jack decided he'd rather keep the money and he put it into his pocket -- next to a silver cross which, so the story goes, kept the Devil from changing back into his original form.

Eventually Jack freed the Devil, but not before obtaining a contract of sorts with stipulations that the Devil could not take revenge on him for his deeds. Specifically the Devil agreed not to bother Jack for a year, and that should he die, the Devil would not ever claim Jack's soul.

A year later the Devil came around looking for payback, but Jack realized he had made a mistake in only gaining a year's grace and so he tricked him again -- this time convincing the Devil to climb a tree and pick a piece of fruit. When the Devil went up, Jack carved a cross into the tree thus trapping the Devil, whereupon Jack negotiated a new contract in which the Devil would leave him be for ten more years.

As the story goes, Jack died not too long after that, but when he reached the pearly gates God turned him away, saying neither in Heaven nor Purgatory would Jack find a home!

The Devil, still very mad at Jack but bound by the contract, couldn't collect Jack's soul, and instead he turned Jack away from Hell, sending him back to earth with a the curse that he forever wander the night.

To 'help' Jack along his journey through the darkness the Devil gave him a burning coal, which Jack placed into a carved-out turnip, and holding that lit turnip has been wandering the Earth ever since!

At some point in the long history of the tale Jack became known as "Jack of the Lantern," and then, simply "Jack O' Lantern." And now you know!

04. Santa's Little Helper Balloon (Thanksgiving)

The Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon is now a well-known and well-established part of the holiday, with very expensive creations that represent characters from popular cartoons (including The Simpsons) appearing each year, but that is NOT how they first started out!

While the early parades contained a variety of different decorations and features, it was in 1927 when the air balloon -- the Felix the Cat balloon actually -- made its debut.

Originally filled with hot air, Felix was filled helium for the 1928 parade, which made him stay aloft longer and made him easier to handle -- and an expanding cast of balloons was created by Goodyear Rubber Company to accompany him.

Originally the balloons were not deflated and collected at the end of the parade -- instead they were released! Attached to each of the balloons was an address label directing the lucky person who found it to mail it back to Macy's with a letter indicating who they were and where they found the balloon, and for their troubles they were given a prize in the form of a gift from Macy's (though just what the gift was is not known for sure).

The balloons in the parade -- which was first made nationally famous by appearing in the movie Miracle on 34th Street -- are no longer made by Goodyear, and needless to say they are also no longer released to be found by some lucky person. Can you imagine the reaction of an airline pilot to a ginormous Bart Simpson suddenly appearing in front of their plane?!

The Bart Simpson Thanksgiving Day Balloon was introduced to the parade in 1990 -- while the first video game character -- Sonic the Hedgehog -- was introduced three years later.

Our Top Three are on the next page...