HOLLY HILL — Christmas has always been special to Kathy Hill, who as a youth in Diamond Bar, California, was always amused by a message in lights on a fence on a high vista overlooking the valley.
It read: “Bah, humbug.”
So when she moved temporarily into a unit in the Marina Grande on the Halifax high-rise with spectacular views of the Halifax River, the beachside and Atlantic Ocean a few weeks ago, she bought a string of lights and arranged it in a way on the balcony so it spelled out her favorite whimsical Christmas idiom.
Humbug, as in “Christmas is a humbug,” is a phrase commonly associated with Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly old man from “A Christmas Carol,” the Charles Dickens novel that in 1843 attempted to define the true meaning of Christmas. Scrooge considers the holiday a humbug because he views it as a “poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 25th of December.”
Scrooge, of course, comes to realize a different meaning: kindness and generosity. The story of a man’s ability to turn around his thinking inspired Hill. And “Bah, humbug?”
“I didn’t mean any offense by it. I thought it was comical, different,” Hill said.
Other residents at the twin towers of Marina Grande, not so much.
This week Hill was contacted by the condo’s community association and the unit’s owner, Laurie Borasky-Gigliotti, urging her to immediately take down the message. Displays of any kind are verboten on the tower’s balconies, she said.
“You aren’t supposed to put up lights, let alone ‘Bah, humbug’,” Borasky-Gigliotti said. “They showed incredibly bad judgment. I have no idea what they were thinking.”
Hill said she first lit the sign either Friday or Saturday night.
Borasky-Gigliotti said it was on during the Daytona Holiday Boat Parade, an event that increased its exposure, in addition to the Marina Grande’s 700 residents. The unit’s situated in a location that’s difficult to see from the Seabreeze Boulevard bridge nearby.
A text from Borasky-Gigliotti to Hill reads: “Get it down now. The front desk is getting calls and emails from very upset tenants. You have made absolutely no friends ... the entire two towers is coming (un)glued over it all.”
It further suggests Hill should “be prepared for major, massive retaliation,” and that she might not want to park her car in the slot designated for the unit.
Hill, whose permanent home is in Oklahoma, said she turned the lights off for good Monday night.
“Maybe I’m just a fish out of water,” she said. “Maybe this is California humor, just joking around. ... I don’t know. I don’t know Florida.”
https://www.news-journalonline.com/...old-to-deep-six-holly-hill-bah-humbug-display
Gotta love the Condo Commandos.....
It read: “Bah, humbug.”
So when she moved temporarily into a unit in the Marina Grande on the Halifax high-rise with spectacular views of the Halifax River, the beachside and Atlantic Ocean a few weeks ago, she bought a string of lights and arranged it in a way on the balcony so it spelled out her favorite whimsical Christmas idiom.
Humbug, as in “Christmas is a humbug,” is a phrase commonly associated with Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly old man from “A Christmas Carol,” the Charles Dickens novel that in 1843 attempted to define the true meaning of Christmas. Scrooge considers the holiday a humbug because he views it as a “poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 25th of December.”
Scrooge, of course, comes to realize a different meaning: kindness and generosity. The story of a man’s ability to turn around his thinking inspired Hill. And “Bah, humbug?”
“I didn’t mean any offense by it. I thought it was comical, different,” Hill said.
Other residents at the twin towers of Marina Grande, not so much.
This week Hill was contacted by the condo’s community association and the unit’s owner, Laurie Borasky-Gigliotti, urging her to immediately take down the message. Displays of any kind are verboten on the tower’s balconies, she said.
“You aren’t supposed to put up lights, let alone ‘Bah, humbug’,” Borasky-Gigliotti said. “They showed incredibly bad judgment. I have no idea what they were thinking.”
Hill said she first lit the sign either Friday or Saturday night.
Borasky-Gigliotti said it was on during the Daytona Holiday Boat Parade, an event that increased its exposure, in addition to the Marina Grande’s 700 residents. The unit’s situated in a location that’s difficult to see from the Seabreeze Boulevard bridge nearby.
A text from Borasky-Gigliotti to Hill reads: “Get it down now. The front desk is getting calls and emails from very upset tenants. You have made absolutely no friends ... the entire two towers is coming (un)glued over it all.”
It further suggests Hill should “be prepared for major, massive retaliation,” and that she might not want to park her car in the slot designated for the unit.
Hill, whose permanent home is in Oklahoma, said she turned the lights off for good Monday night.
“Maybe I’m just a fish out of water,” she said. “Maybe this is California humor, just joking around. ... I don’t know. I don’t know Florida.”
https://www.news-journalonline.com/...old-to-deep-six-holly-hill-bah-humbug-display
Gotta love the Condo Commandos.....
