Christmas a Humbug? Holiday yard sign finds new home

Since 2006, Darryl Ramsey has put up a Christmas decoration in his yard that some found amusing and others ... not so much.

The decoration was a 6-foot-high and 24-foot-long wooden frame, covered in strings of Christmas lights spelling out the words, "Bah! Humbug!"

These immortal words, hurled at merry makers by Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol", could be seen on Ramsey's property each year during the days between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day on Benton Hill Road in southwest Cape Girardeau.

Ramsey said he doesn't consider himself a "Scrooge," but when he read about someone else who had put up a similar sign, "It just seemed like a funny idea for Christmas." So, he built one of his own.

Ramsey said most people told him they also found it funny, but there were others who didn't share his sense of humor.

"One year, someone had removed all the light bulbs and put them in a box with a note saying, something to the effect that the sign was sacrilegious," Ramsey said.

Ramsey said these comments never deterred him from putting the sign back up each Christmas. However, the sign did not go up this year because Ramsey will soon be moving to North Carolina.

Also, he has decided it was too big to take with him, so he recently put up a post on the Nextdoor app saying the sign was "free to a good home" to whomever would promise to display it every Christmas.

The sign was quickly claimed by Barbara Lloyd. When asked why she wanted the sign, Lloyd joked, "because I have a shirt that says 'Grinch'."

"I just thought it was so neat," Lloyd said. "I'm not a 'Scroogie' kind of person. I'm a giving kind of person, but I'm all for a good laugh."

Lloyd hasn't decided where she will be able to display the sign because it turned out to be a lot bigger than she expected.

"It'll fit in our yard, but people might not be able to see it from the road," Lloyd said. "We might have to put it up in my grandson's yard."