Christmas Adios
We’re about to head out before Christmas hits its Big Finale, Santa sets his GPS and leaves all his elves waiting for that fat bonus which is as likely as a Peking Pension Plan. Just shut the door behind us, leave the island and motor past the malls jammed with desperate folks on their last frenzied Push, credit cards and stress maxed, feeling like Jimmy Stewart when the bank run ends. Only without the Norman Rockwell town to back him up with community support….
I remember the Old Christmas. The one where we were poor as churchmice and all those gifts to friends and family felt like one more weight on the anchor dragging us below the surface. The folks who make minimum wage or who are unemployed or who pick our crops for next to nothing — Christmas isn’t A Wonderful Life, let me tell ya.
I know, we say the same thing every year. Christmas. Too commercial. Too materialistic. Too phony baloney. A month or two of seriously clichéd songs, TV specials, movie reruns. Scrooge, the Grinch, Tiny Tim, Christmas Future, Miracle on 34th St., all to sell cars, perfume, watches, toys, baubles and bullshit. I’m as sentimental as the next he-man, but C”MON!! It’s a tad excessive. It’s pretty close to obscene. I’m sorry, Virginia, but Santa is an executive at Wal-Mart, hate to be the one to break it to you.
I could tell you we go away to some dark hollow to escape all this … but the truth is, we leave so we don’t dampen the neighbors’ spirits here on the cynical South End. No need to thank us. It’s our gift. And as always, it’s really the thought that used to count.
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