Christmas
too commercial? Shocking!
by
Robert LaFrance
Two days and two hours ago, a middle
aged husband and wife said, almost in unison, to me: “Christmas is getting too
commercial now; it’s not fun anymore.”
I was tempted to say: “And have you
heard about the invention of these newfangled things called cake mixes, power
steering, and computers?”
As one who is standing on the edge
of the shifting sand dune of old age, I cannot remember a time when Christmas
was anything but too commercial. If you want to watch a movie such as “Miracle on 34th Street” or “It’s a
Wonderful Life” and think they represent reality, I have some news for you:
they are the product of optimists and optimists are usually wrong. “How the
Grinch Stole Christmas” is more like reality, at least until he has a change of
heart.
Picture a Christmas season that saw
people devoting their time and their fortunes to helping people; picture a
family that shuns a Christmas tree and all those presents stacked and piled
under it; picture the stores not resorting to sales gimmicks like Black Friday,
and picture the whole holiday season as merely a time to visit friends and
relatives.
Whew! I’m all worn out after
picturing all that.
I remember one JULY day in 1973,
when I was sitting around a hotel in Vancouver, that I looked up at the
television that was playing a Christmas commercial. That was not an aberration,
because from that day until December 25th, there was a fog of
Christmas commercials every hour. “God rest ye, Merry gentlemen” came on the
air every half hour amid the jingling bells. That was the earliest year I
remember the holiday season starting.
How about those jewellery TV
commercials? It is enough to make one retch. The soft focus film, the quiet
music, and persuasive words that imply that you (the male) are a no-good
useless piece of elephant dung if you don’t go out and buy your loved one a
$758 ring.
Gee, I wish I weren’t so cynical.
Bah humbug.
**********************
On to other subjects and away from
my December melancholy, I have noticed that different things get lost in
different seasons. In the summer, indeed all year long but mostly in the summer
even when most laundry is hung outside on the line, socks get lost. I have a
cardboard box the size of a Volkswaggen Jetta and it is chock full of socks
that, like Flug, have no mates. (His 17th wife Dora went back to
Ontario on Tuesday.)
Where do socks go, one at a time?
Are they like the light inside the fridge? We don’t know where it goes once we
close the door. It’s been a mystery for years where socks disappear to, once
they are near a dryer or a clothesline. Logic says that they slip down behind
the dryer or fly off the clothesline into the grass, but I’ve looked. They just
disappear.
Now that we’re in December, I am
finding that mittens have joined the lost socks club. I own four pairs of
mittens and so far I have lost one mitten out of each of three pairs. As I go
outside, I sometimes wear a green mitten on one hand and a blue one on the
other. “A fashion faux pas” as my daughter says.
I have looked in our vehicles, in
the shed, in the garage, on the roof, in the porch and on the ground and have
not been able to find any of the lost mittens – or socks. The matching pair I
do have left is under lock and key. When I took them in to our safety deposit
box, the bank cashier raised her left eyebrow, but diplomatically held her
tongue.
After a lot of thought, I have
decided that both the lost socks and lost mitten syndromes are somehow
connected to the recent Remembrance Day (although it should be all year)
activities when each of us loses five or six poppies each November. It is said
that the national Royal Canadian Legion president, Leonard Findglad, lives in a
giant Manitoba mansion paid for with poppy money. (Kidding.)
**********************
One final subject, since I have been
thinking and want that to continue, a question I have often pondered is: why do
people entertain other people in their kitchens instead of in their parlours
(old word but good) and living rooms?
The obvious reason, and one giving
only part of the answer, is that persons of a certain gender do not want
riffraff tracking dirt over their pristine living room carpets, rugs or
hardwood floors. In the old days, the only time visitors got past the doorway
of the kitchen was when they filed into the parlour to view the remains, so to
speak.
I have
finally figured it out – the reason guests stay in the kitchen. Flug gave me
the answer: “It’s where the food is, stupid."
-end-
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