 |
|
|
CHRISTMAS
|
One of these days Xmas shopping may start July 4
By GORDON GREB
of TheColumnists.com
It happened last year and it’s happening again. Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky; raindrops keep falling on my head; the weather outside is frightful; chestnuts roasting on an open fire; let it snow, let it–WAIT! I can’t stand it any longer!
Those lyrics keep going round and round in my head and won’t go away. I’m repeatedly hearing Andy Williams’ “It’s the holiday season,” Bing Crosby’s “Do you hear what I hear?” and Tony Bennett’s “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.”
How much Christmas season can anyone stand?
It seems those bells of yuletide start ringing in my head in early September right after Labor Day. Would you believe that to increase its profits Wal-Mart began announcing this year that “Santa Claus is coming to town” by putting up its red and green displays as early as October? Furthermore this huge holiday big box and other retailers like it are now making us believe that Halloween should look like Christmas. This year some of my neighbors began stringing orange-colored lights for the first time around their houses and showing DVDs of “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” to their children.
What’s worse is that Christmas is definitely merging into Thanksgiving. Those eager can’t-wait-till-the-25th-of-December retailers are so anxious to sell their jingle bell stuff that after you enter their stores to observe Thanksgiving you really can’t concentrate on it.
As an anxious Pilgrim father going to the market in mid-November trying to decide between a plump turkey or juicy ham for our family’s holiday dinner, it was a miracle I didn’t come home with a sackful of toys for tots, explaining lamely to my spouse, “Tommy wants a bicycle, Mary wants a dolly” after hearing “Frosty, the Snowman” and “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” over and over in my ears. After having all those sounds on my mind, what other excuse is there?
As long as we allow Christmas to last for
an eternity, it’s bound to affect other key elements of
our society. Its subtle influence already is so pervasive that
the seasons for baseball, football, and presidential campaigns
have grown longer and longer.
Never in American history have aspirants for the White House
begun campaigning so early. When was the last time you remembered
any previous race for The White House beginning right after the
last presidential election and lasting for four years? If this
trend keeps up, you’re likely to hear a radio news bulletin
any moment now telling us that the New Hampshire primary has
been moved up to Dec. 25.
Maybe you’re smirking because you don’t think this is seriously funny. That’s because you haven’t yet felt the dread premonition that starts to envelop you as early as Labor Day, pick up speed on Columbus Day, start to sound the alarm at Halloween, and come crashing down on you by Thanksgiving.
The way things are going, you’ll start hearing jingle bells mixed with firecrackers before the next Fourth of July. And before you know it all of us will be shopping for Christmas all year long. I’m telling you something needs to be done and I need your help.
Spread the word. Tell shoppers of the world to unite! We have nothing to lose but our VISA and MASTER cards. We need to put Christmas back in its place. Surely we don’t want the cookie monster in the red suit–Santa Claus, Inc. himself--trying to exercise monopoly control of all our money the same way that horrible Enron Corporation tried to do. This is a battle too large for one individual to fight and I’ve struggled with it so long I don’t even recognize myself anymore. Much to my alarm I find myself slowly morphing into Charles Dickens’s scowling and irritable Ebenezer “Scrooge.”
Being upset and angry like this really
keeps me on edge. I planned on pulling the plugs of our television
sets on Columbus Day, telling the U.S. Post Office to stop delivering
the mail after Thanksgiving, and instructing my wife to start
observing a wartime “blackout” on December 7th (Pearl
Harbor Day). While expecting these emergency measures to last
till December 25, my wife saw things differently. She balked
at implementing any of them, especially putting up a front door
sign saying, “Christmas Carolers Keep Away--Mad Dog Loose
Inside.”
It’s unclear when I felt the clarity of that bright and
shining light come down upon me and give me hope for the future.
All I know is an angel resembling my wife appeared one night
while I was in bed and I distinctly heard her say, “I Am
the Spirit of Things to Come.”
This apparition told me to stop worrying about the Commercialism of Christmas. Instead, the spirit advised, “substitute something else for that annoying Endless Holiday Shopping Spree.” When I greeted my wife the next morning, she knowingly smiled, handed me a DVD, and told me to pay particular attention to an episode of the "Seinfeld" program.
“See what you can learn by viewing ‘The Strike,’” she said.
What I found most interesting about this episode of "Seinfeld" was something called the “Festivus for the Rest of Us.” This was seen on television for the first time on December 18, l997 (Season 9, Episode 10), scripted especially for the show by writer Daniel O’Keefe. He got the idea from his own dad but assigned it on the program to the father of George (Jason Alexander), the no-nonsense Korean War veteran Frank Costanza (Jerry Stiller). You learn almost immediately that Costanza physically pounds home the principles of Festivus with blows to the head if necessary.
Watching the show you see friends and relatives seated around a table, whose centerpiece is a tall white pole, and they’re taught to unburden themselves of their frustrations. This they do by pointing an angry finger at anyone who’s offended them this past year and criticizing them heavily for their awful and stupid failings. It’s important to pay close attention to Costanza. Failing to understand him can get his two fingers poking your eye for being such an idiot. It’s his way of demonstrating the basic tenets of his new holiday.
The main reason Costanza invented Festivus was that he got fed up with all the trappings associated with Christmas. He needed a way to avoid all the senseless rushing around to shop, send cards, buy presents, etc. So he came up with the idea of a new holiday. The center of attention for this holiday is not a fur tree but a plain ordinary pole–a broomstick will do–which carries no lights or decorations of any kind.
Then, with everyone gathered around the
pole instead of exchanging presents, you trade insults. The grand
finale comes with the senior member demonstrating a “Feat
of Strength.” He challenges anyone to a try to pin him down
in a wrestling match. Nobody wants to try it because Frank is
determined to win by any means necessary.
After mulling the program over in my mind, I found this Festivus
holiday totally inappropriate for my family. If as they say "Seinfeld"
was originally designed to be about nothing, Festivus achieves
that goal admirably. If all three of my small grandchildren–twin
eight-year old girls and one six-year old boy--were ordered to
pile atop Grandpa, I’m sure they could easily pin me down.
But urging my tiny tots to fight me at Christmastime isn’t
my idea of a Happy Holiday. Yet watching the "Seinfeld"
show did give me a good idea after all: Let’s turn Christmas
shopping into nothing.
Why hadn’t I thought of this solution before? We only need to petition Congress to do what our politicians have done before to transform our holidays into nothing–-move Christmas each year to the third Monday of December--and then make everyone in America observe their three-day holiday on trains, planes and automobiles. Look how placing these other holidays on Mondays succeeded in transforming the country into a great national migration, as for example, the big travel movements we get out of Martin Luther King Jr. Day (3rd Monday in January), George Washington Day (3rd Monday in February), Memorial Day (last Monday in May) and Labor Day (lst Monday in September.)
The time has come to pin Christmas down to three days instead of three months with a simple piece of legislation. We no longer need to remember Christ’s birthday as coming every year on Dec. 25 but let it fall randomly like a bouncing roulette ball on whatever Monday happens to turn up after each revolution of the earth around the sun. People would be so busy planning these three-day trips to bother with shopping. They’d be traveling like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Christmas Holiday!
Whether this brilliant idea will appeal to Festivus enthusiasts, I really don’t know. The year 2007 is their tenth anniversary. Growing numbers of them seem to be perfectly happy with wrestling and insulting each other regularly on December 23. But let’s take a vote? Shall we move ‘Festivus for the Rest of Us’ to Monday, too?
©2007 by Gordon Greb. The caricature of the author is by the author. The carto;on is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 26, 2007.
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Gordon Greb. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Gordon's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|