It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I love this time of year, when Christmas tiptoes stealthily into the stores. You know how it is. At first it’s just a candy cane or two and then an ornament or maybe a small string of lights. It’s so subtle it would be easy to miss.

Not really.

Christmas lands on retail stores some time in August the way the Allied Army landed on Normandy. When the Holiday merchandise arrives it’s every man for himself and if you stand in one place too long you could find yourself strung with tinsel, illuminated by a string of C7s or splattered white with artificial snow. There’s no place for wimps in a Happy Yuletide.

Every year, the manufacturers trot out bizarre new Christmas-themed products. For example, there’s a certain greeting card company — to protect its identity, we’ll call it Mallhark — that brings out a whole new line of collectible tree ornaments every year. Tucked in amongst the Santas and snowmen and penguins you’ll find Teenage Fashion Model Barbie (trademark), and The Wicked Witch of the West (all rights reserved), and Robby the Robot (patent pending). It gets even stranger when you see the ornaments celebrating Star Trek ™, and Star Wars ™, and assorted superheroes (DC). Who thinks the best way to say “Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men” is with a Klingon battle cruiser, Han Solo in trooper armor, or Wolverine with his claws extended? Is the company motto actually “When you care enough to send the very weirdest?”

It would be easy to be cynical and say that this is just a callous attempt to make a quick buck. So I will. This is just a callous attempt to make a quick buck.

Of course, they do it because it works. People really do buy these ornaments no matter how much it annoys their loved ones.

Speaking of which, another of the traditions of Christmas — at least at my house — is the traditional purchase of an evil, noise-making robot. The holidays aren’t complete at our house until we’ve added some new battery-operated, microprocessor-controlled, fur-covered horror…like the foxmunk my wife just brought home.

From its floppy fabric feet to its beady, black button eyes to its blood-red Santa cap it stands eight inches tall. I’m no zoologist, but as near as I can tell it’s an unhealthy cross between a fox and a chipmunk and when you squeeze its left foot (readers with weak constitutions may want to skip over the next bit) it dances in a circle and sings “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” with the same forced cheerfulness of the dolls in It’s A Small World.

When we dig out the rest of decorations it will join a zombie-robot decoration army that includes the singing goose, the singing snowmen, the singing tree, and the clock … that sings at the top of every hour. At night, when the lights are low, I can’t help but feel that they’re all watching me … waiting for a chance to make their move. I’d pull all of their batteries out, but what if they still worked after that?

So I settle for trying to look harmless and avoid making any threatening movements or gestures.

Just to be safe, I hide out in the family room watching my favorite Holiday Specials on DVD. Back when I was a child and the giant networks strode the Earth, Christmas was a magical time on television. The annual airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas really was “must see TV” and everything in the house stopped for thirty minutes. Interrupting Linus’ speech was expressly forbidden and carried a veiled threat of loss of breathing privileges.

Now, of course, I can just pop in a DVD and see the show in High-Def with or without commentary in Dolby 5.1 surround sound. Having it so readily available takes some of the “special” out of the special … as does the vast catalog of other licensed Christmas specials. Every character and series on television has to try and make a buck off the holidays. The most heinous example of this … which only aired once and has been shown to cause madness in laboratory scientists … is the infamous Christmas with Jon and Kate and their Lawyers. No. I’m kidding. The worst ever was Star Wars Holiday Special.

So I turn off the TV and try to find somewhere else to focus my attention. Which turns out to be sort of difficult because another Holiday Tradition is the perpetually blank look I wear as I try to settle on the perfect gift for my wife. I know a lot of guys struggle with gift-giving so fellas, let me give you a hint … she’s been giving you hints all year.

At our house, it works like this. My wife will see something in a catalog or newspaper ad or expensive upscale boutique. To let me know she’s interested she’ll say something subtle like “That’s nice” or “I like that” or “buy one of these for me for Christmas; the blue one in a size six.” Being a guy I’m likely to miss the hint because I’m thinking about a problem at work, or I’m trying to suck a popcorn husk out from between two teeth, or I’m distracted by a shiny object. If only I paid attention, gift-giving would be a lot easier.

Instead I wander through the packed stores trying to remember if I was supposed to get her a size six or a size eight vacuum cleaner bag. Which will eventually lead to the post-holiday tradition of going to the store to return what I did buy so we can buy what I should have bought in the first place. During that trip the hinting will start for the next year … not that I’ll notice. I’ll be distracted by the Valentine’s Day merchandise.