The older I get, the more I want to light a blowtorch to Frosty the freakin' Snowman and pop a cap in Santa Claus' head. I try, I fervently try, to hold on to that old-time Christmas Spirit of yore, the one that involves Jimmy Stewart movies and roasted chestnuts and Charlie Brown TV specials, but sometimes it's a losing battle in this Wal-Mart consumer world we have. I feel like I need to just stay away from any shopping centers the entire month of December. The simple matter of getting a haircut at the mall on my lunch break becomes an ordeal of fighting traffic, battling my way to parking, clusters of doddering shoppers (do any of these people work?) only to find the mall haircut place too crowded with people who, like me, for some reason have to get those holiday haircuts. And I don't generally live in a crowded kind of town. It's like the whole world becomes Wal-Mart for a month, jammed with overweight, pasty-faced and dazed shoppers pushing at each other for bargains.
(Don't get me started on the middle-aged women -- sexist, ageist as it may be, I have recently decided the single rudest element of our society is that same faction that complains so much about rudeness. Every time lately I've had someone "road rage" me, nearly run into me while babbling into a cell phone, or simply barge their way through shopping aisles, shoving and pushing without even an 'excuse me' or a look at my face, the culprit seems to be one of these harried 50-something women, not a rude teen or a grumpy grandpa. Why is this? Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe I should do my thesis on it.)
ANYway, it crumbles away at the things I do like about yuletide, to deal with the pulsating flow of consumers, consumers, consumers every time I leave the real world to go to ShopLand (TM). Hell, I'm as guilty as any of them with my consumer madness, I know. And it is only 30 days of the year or so (well, 90 from when the stores start to decorate). Besides, it's Baby Peter's first Christmas and that's the main thing to celebrate this season -- it'll be at least a few more months before he learns the words "gimme," I hope...
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