THE GREAT INFLATABLES RACE

In these neighborhoods, holiday cheer is blowing up-literally

- Courtney Flatt

LAST YEAR, A giant inflatable yeti popped up on Highview Street in Richland, Washington. Then another. And another. It was all part of a friendly cross-country rivalry to spread the most holiday cheer.

The competition started when local dad and self-described "Christmas joy spreader" Steve Lee saw an article about Monroe Street in Madison, Wisconsin.

Over the past couple of holiday seasons, that neighborhood had amassed more than a dozen inflatable Santas.

"I thought that was a shameful display. I thought we could do much better, much more quickly because why not?" Lee jokes.

So he ordered boxes of 12-foot-tall, light-up, inflatable versions of the Bumble, the monster-turned-lovable Christmas helper in the 1964 animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. No one had yet used these abominable snowmen to cheer up their neighborhood, Lee says. That's why he went with it.

"Over the course of two days, under the cover of night and in the middle of the workday when people were at work, we dropped them on all their porches, with no instructions," Lee says. He got a few confused messages: Did someone deliver this to the wrong house? "Then everyone sort of just figured out what was going on and it sort of spread and spread and spread," he says.