Gifted Typist

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There are moments when Christmas seems more like a stint in Guantanamo Bay than the Christmas songs you hear on the radio.

Comfort and joy? Ha!

I realized this the other day while standing in “the line-up that had no end.” I did not want to be in the big box and rarely go, but it was the only place that had the coveted thing my son wants for Christmas.

Trust me, this was a painful philosophical sacrifice. I would have taken acid-laced bamboo shoots up my fingernail over this.

It was hot, crowded and chaotic in the big box. There were eight groups of customers in front of me, each with shopping carts packed to the hilt. The shoplifting beeper went off every time someone left the store. Clerks with headsets shot around the place like stray bullets but no one fixed the beeper. The line-up ground to a halt because the cash clerk was trying to get a number on a pair of kids boots.

Outside in the parking lot, traffic was gridlocked with line-ups to get into line-ups to get into line-ups to get out.

And a baby was screaming in the line next to mine.

It occurred to me that the baby was absolutely right. We should have all been screaming our heads off to protest this stupidness.

Whether you are celebrating a religious event, the winter solstice or the fun of a winter party, Christmas commercial madness is chipping away at the comfort and joy. If it keeps up, Christmas will look like it did in Potterville in It’s a Wonderful Life. In fact, if you’re in a big box, it already does look like Potterville

And that’s too bad because Christmas used to be sort of fun.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 4:09 am and is filed under culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.