Let the games begin. Now that the annoying tradition of Thanksgiving is out of the way, we can all turn our attention to the things that matter: things like trampling middle aged women in small-town Wal Marts to ensure we spend thousands of dollars on crap very few of us will ever really use.
On Friday, a 48-year-old woman was trampled beneath 30 shopping carts and countless pairs of comfortable shoes in the breezeway of a Washington state Wal-Mart as she attempted to make her way through the rush to begin her Christmas shopping.
Paramedics brought her to a local hospital, which diagnosed her condition as good, and the local Wal-Mart has a brand new DVD player on hold just for her.
This woman’s fate is a great example of what I hate about the weeks leading up to Christmas. Let me count the ways:
-A total disregard of common courtesy so as to make sure shopper A or shopper B is the first to buy that brand-new rake that turns into a condom.
-Holiday movies. CBS aired one Sunday night called “The Search for John Christmas” with Peter Falk and Valerie Bertinelli. It sounds like the name of a bad episode of CSI. Oh, Columbo, how the mighty have fallen.
-Zales, a leading seller of diamonds and other fine jewelry, has an ad campaign going with the slogan, “This Christmas, celebrate her.” Diamonds may be forever, but bank accounts certainly are not. And what, exactly, are we celebrating about her? Shouldn’t the slogan be, “This Christmas, celebrate Jesus’ birth”?
-God, the music. All of it.
-Decorations. Why do Christmas lights go up two weeks before Halloween and fester on rooftops until the Fourth of July? This is not festive nor time-efficient. It’s an eyesore.
-The family guilt trips. One of the things I’m most thankful for about being single is not having to spend the holidays playing Pictionary with my girlfriend’s blind grandmother.
-Mistletoe. It doesn’t work, and a lot of people are actually allergic to it. People who aren’t getting any on Thanksgiving shouldn’t expect a miracle just because they’re standing under a seasonal shrub.
-Santa Claus. You think that’s an easy thing for Jewish families to compete with?
-The ruse. Everyone knows the day after Thanksgiving is the busiest of the year when it comes to shopping, but how many people know also that the day after Christmas is when most merchandise is returned to stores? Christmas is not an excuse to buy crap we’d never imagine purchasing any other day of the year. Don’t shake your head like that…we all do it.
-Christmas carols. I’d put it under the same category as Christmas music, but it’s a beast unto itself. Cavorting door to door with the power of song is not only strange, it’s downright antisocial. Thanks, but no thanks.
Not everything about Christmas is bad, however. For example, it only comes around once a year. Well, I’d love to stay and explain why I hate Flag Day so much too, but the sales are about to end, and there’s this great version of “Silent Night” by Enya that I really want to hear. So, season’s greetings and good riddance to all.
