When I was twelve, my parents took me to see an eccentric house in Wheeling, West Virginia. Plastic statues in clashing scales and jubilant disarray erupted from the house’s property lines: reindeer, jack-o-lanterns, Santas, teddy bears, flamingoes, nutcrackers, Jesus, Joseph, swans, Mary, and Magi, all interspersed with American flags. The owner had created a rickety grid-work of grotto-like displays extending around the home’s perimeter, a polyptych taken over by American holiday icons.