Last year the store owners association Rotterdam Centrum came up with remarkable Christmas decorations, namely LED-lit plastic jerry cans.

An actual design agency called M.E.S.T. (the name means ‘manure’) came up with the idea, and of course they also came up with a back story. The use of jerry cans apparently highlighted the fact that Rotterdam is a port in which brawn is typically rated above brain and it also stressed environmental commitment. Perhaps unsurprisingly the brawny citizens of Rotterdam ignored the intellectualizations and thought the decorations were naff.

This year the store owners association of the Jan Evertsenstraat in Amsterdam took a long, hard look at the Christmas decoration dilemma and decided to take the same disastrous direction.

Amsterdammers were not amused. Unlike their brothers and sisters from the city on the Rotte they used stronger terms to display their displeasure: “This is an outrage, it is horrible,” one man told AT5. Another said that the decorations had to be done on the cheap, “and it shows.”

The district paid for the decorations with tax money so it is not surprising that they crow about the results, although even their copywriters had a little trouble coming up with language that didn’t sound sarcastic: “And this really is unique, you cannot even call them real Christmas lights.”

Our very own Orangemaster had a chat with the owner of trendy Bar Baarsch on the Jan Evertsenstraat and asked him what he thought of the lights. “I think they’re great”, he said. He liked the fact that they were festive but not Christmassy. I told him that it reminded me of a Mexican fiesta like atmosphere, with more of a summer feel to it. He also liked the idea that people didn’t like it because the publicity is great, too.