One Good Thing About Christmas
We stop hearing Christmas music day and night from “Your Official Christmas Station” (Who appointed them?) By 6 pm on Christmas day, they’ll be back to their usual soft-rock format and nobody will realize the Christmas season has just begun.
We’ll also stop hearing people who like dissing all this Christian “Merry Christmas” stuff. They don’t diss the day off with pay, so maybe they should stay on the job.
Stores will open at a decent hour, and the help can go back to a normal life. I never will understand why we feel it’s necessary to observe the annual ritual of Christ’s birth by getting in line around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. to buy something that will be (a) out of style, (b) outmoded or (c) forgotten this time next year.
No, I’m not any sort of grinch. I just don’t see Christmas as the time when merchants tote up their fourth quarter sales and percent increases. If we want to give presents on the occasion of the Winter Solstice, that’s fine with me. I’ll make a list and leave it on the kitchen table; do your best and, if money’s an issue, home-made chocolate chip cookies will make me yours forever.
But the origin for all this projection of sales, for the ads showing cars with bows on them, cute young gals in abbreviated (!) Santa suits is, oddly enough, a person in my religion who came to show us a better way to live, to give and teach forgiveness, to lead us to eternal life. Hard to hear with all those cash registers ringing.
We’ll also stop hearing people who like dissing all this Christian “Merry Christmas” stuff. They don’t diss the day off with pay, so maybe they should stay on the job.
Stores will open at a decent hour, and the help can go back to a normal life. I never will understand why we feel it’s necessary to observe the annual ritual of Christ’s birth by getting in line around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. to buy something that will be (a) out of style, (b) outmoded or (c) forgotten this time next year.
No, I’m not any sort of grinch. I just don’t see Christmas as the time when merchants tote up their fourth quarter sales and percent increases. If we want to give presents on the occasion of the Winter Solstice, that’s fine with me. I’ll make a list and leave it on the kitchen table; do your best and, if money’s an issue, home-made chocolate chip cookies will make me yours forever.
But the origin for all this projection of sales, for the ads showing cars with bows on them, cute young gals in abbreviated (!) Santa suits is, oddly enough, a person in my religion who came to show us a better way to live, to give and teach forgiveness, to lead us to eternal life. Hard to hear with all those cash registers ringing.
posted by Tom Carten at 11:50 PM
1 Comments:
I am just "getting over" the 1969-1970 Christmas shopping season.
Working for a major WV retailer (before the mall) in WB, I witnessed the "tricks" played on both sides of the register.
Yeah, it was THAT different than from what I expected.
In a strange way it made me "better" about the holidays.
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