I don’t know why we wait until the end of the year to impose so many holidays on the world. December is cold and the start of the winter season, and some places get their worst weather between December and March. Blizzards with their snow and ice affect holiday travel, bring down most inflatables (poor twelve-foot Rudolph), and sometimes the snow is even the wrong consistency to build a decent snowman.
Merry Christmas anyway.
Malls are suffering from a problem; nobody wants to actually make the physical effort to walk in them, visit department stores or little independent pop-up shops, examine real merchandise and purchase it in real time. This is particularly tough on businesses in New Jersey (and some other places) where plastic bags have been banned, but many of the retailers have come out with nice handled paper bags (I have a bag that tucks away in a corner of my purse, and I’ll link the product manufacturer for you below if you would like to try them).
Santa sometimes sits in the main courts of malls for ages without a single child stopping by to sit on his lap. Part of it is that parents don’t want to dress up their children, or the kids can’t be bothered. But folks, you can’t visit Santa on Amazon. Though you can also buy my favorite reusable shopping bags there.
Merry Christmas anyway.
We are having the same problems with factional wars in parts of the world. In fact, a group of protestors decided to hoist “Cease Fire Now” signs in my little town, outside the local Krispy Kreme this very afternoon. Somebody posted that it was an anti-Semitic protest, which seems perplexing. To add to the confusion, I saw a social media post this week from a Jewish woman who escaped a homicidal husband after being forced to submit to sexual and psychological abuse, and was encouraged to yield to some extremist tenets which degraded her as a human being. Not being familiar with the whole story behind some of these twigs on the tree of the Jewish faith, I can’t judge, but the descriptions sounded like the poor woman was not in the community as a whole as we may know it, but in a cult. Now that she is free–at the cost of her extended family and most friends who have denounced her–she went public with her story to bring some of the cruelties of sectarian life into the exposing light of knowledge.
Happy Hanukkah, anyway, my friend.
Many of the themed foodstuffs you find on shelves this holiday were produced in August or earlier. But then we are used to preservatives in our food here in America, which other countries ban because they know better.
Merry Christmas anyway.
Those folks who put out signage saying, “Keep Christ in Christmas” are not saying anything in reality, because Christmas pretty much translates to “Christ’s Holy Day.” So, Christ is in Christmas. What they mean is to keep the day of December 25 holy. Yet they still go out and buy Uncle Theodore a new shirt.
Not everybody celebrates a December holiday on the 25th. Some have theirs earlier or later.
Merry Christmas anyway.
A lot of people spend December 25 alone. The estimate is that nineteen percent of Americans go solo on Christmas. Even though 88% of those surveyed said they would invite a solo person to celebrate with them, it looks like some slip through the cracks.
Merry Christmas anyway.
In the popular movie A Christmas Story, the holiday turkey is ruined when the neighbor’s dogs raid the kitchen and make off with the roast fresh out of the oven, so the family goes to the only place open on the holiday–the local Chinese joint–and enjoy Peking duck (hilariously beheaded by the restaurant owner after Darren McGavin’s character of the “old man” notes it seems to be smiling at him). People are bound to get stuck at airports or train or bus stations, felled by colds, flu or early arrival newborns. Time waits for nobody, and holidays are no exception. Whatever happens on December 25, the day after will come just the same and bring its own burdens and joys.
No matter what your story is, have a Merry Christmas anyway.
(For the shopping bags mentioned in this article, go to https://www.chicobag.com/)
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