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I love the Christmas season.
It’s the only time of year when I can eat chocolate every day without judgment, although anyone planning to buy me clothes this year should note that I may have gone up a size or three.
But even for me, there are some parts of the season that can be unbearably sweet. For instance, the day after Halloween — after two weeks of watching Fright Fests and “Twilight Zone” marathons — the sappy Christmas movies take over the TV. Pretty soon, I find myself crying at just the thought of that Hallmark commercial when the big brother comes home from some faraway place and the little sister puts a bow on him and says, “You’re my present this year.”
Sob. What are they trying to do, get tears in my chocolate cobbler?
And while I adore many Christmas songs — as a writer, I admire anyone who can rhyme “hippopotamuses” and “rhinocerouseses” — they can begin to grate on you after five weeks of “all Christmas all the time” on radio stations, combined with that freakishly festive Muzak all the stores play. Trust me, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is not a song that needed an instrumental treatment.
In fact, it’s the kind of thing that makes people turn violent during the most wonderful time of the year.
After reading about the dastardly deeds committed so far this year in the name of peace on earth, I am starting a petition to send to Santa. I am asking him to change his list categories from “naughty” and “nice” to “naughty,” “nice enough,” “purty good,” and “too stupid to be wasting Rudolph’s oxygen.”
I found some examples for the latter in recent news accounts.
This first item comes from Longview, Texas, where people are known to be passionate about individual rights, or what I like to call, “touch my stuff and I’ll shoot you dead with the Remington double-aught bazooka gun I keep in my truck, back there behind the armadillo scalps and that bag of barbecue pork rinds.”
Here’s what happens when two Texans fight over the same turf: The night before Thanksgiving, the Longview Walmart was packed with people doing last minute shopping for canned cranberry sauce and those little marshmallows that go on top of the sweet potatoes, when a woman who was trying to park came across a space that was empty, with the exception of the man standing in it.
According to the Longview News-Journal, the man was holding the spot with his body and a shopping cart, waiting for his wife to drive around to it. But 43-year-old Vanesa Blackshire saw what was happening and said, “Oh, heck naw,” or something along those lines, and rammed the man with her car.
Police are quoted as saying: “Evidently the suspect wanted the space also, so she hit the man with her car.”
Ya think?
The man was not seriously injured.
Clearly, Vanesa was within her rights. As I have mentioned in this column before, shoppers must follow the “no-holdsies” rule in parking lots, especially during the holidays, when people turn dangerous. But couldn’t she have found a less violent method of getting the space in the name of goodwill toward men?
On the other hand, it’s a good thing she wasn’t driving her other truck, the one with the gun in it.
As a gun club from Scottsdale, Ariz., demonstrates, some people think Christmas and deadly weapons go hand-in-hand. The club is offering a special for the buying public this year: Christmas card photos of your entire family, pictured not only with Santa but with firearms for your children, mother-in-law and even Aunt Ethel with the old-timer’s disease. Everyone in the family can pose holding anything from a pistol to an $80,000 machine gun.
Talk about celebrating Christmas with a bang …
There’s more, but I figure my reading public can only handle so much stupidity at once, which is why this column is limited in word count.
Don’t worry though, I’m watching out for you — but not when you’re sleeping, which is kinda perverted.
Hmmm. That’s another thing I’ve been meaning to talk to Santa about.
You can reach Kelly Kazek at kelly@enewscourier.com or 256-232-2720, ext. 107.
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