It's Beginning to Look a Lot LIke . . . Well, You Know

Welcome to the holiday season. You'll notice that it actually began the day you got your catalogues in the mail. Or maybe it was the day after Halloween.

Ever since the corporate takeover of Christmas, Mr. Ho Ho Ho and his reindeer (we can't use the gentleman's actual name for legal reasons) have overshadowed every other holiday at this time of year.

Take Thanksgiving. If it weren't for football, turkey and food you'd normally avoid the rest of the year, Thanksgiving would be one of those federal holidays with no mail delivery, and the kids would be in school. What wouldn't change is that it would still be a day of mourning for Native Americans.

Instead, what we hear about is Black Friday, that day after Thanksgiving when all the malls and big box stores open as early as 4 a.m., so you can buy your Uncle Bob or Aunt Martha a budget-priced trinket they'll take back to the store the day after Christmas for something they really wanted. Then there's Cyber Monday, where many of the same items can be bought with a click of the . . . well, we can't use that name either. Both of these events are used as harbingers of current economic trends. Right now, with high gas prices and people losing their homes due to mortgages being messed up, business isn't good.

There is no escape from holiday music, whether you're in the mall, in the car or at home. In the Twin Cities alone, two FM radio stations (owned by CBS and Clear Channel, no less) chuck their usual formats to go 24/7 on Christmas music recorded mostly in the 1950s. Let's just say that if you really want to get suspected terrorists to talk, then play this stuff and they'll confess. And they said waterboarding is an instrument of torture.

Big Charity gets into high gear at this time of year, shaming people out of their hard-earned money (with the promise of a tax break) to fund some executive's new Ferrari and/or private resort vacation, or a corrupt dictator under the guise of helping your fellow man. Their partners in the news media make sure kettles become pots of gold, empty food shelves are miraculously filled, and no child is left behind without a toy--which makes you wonder if the process is rigged. Conflicts of interest prevent the news media from keeping the charities on the straight and narrow.

We're not trying to be Scrooge--oops, I mean a character from a Dickens novel. It's just that the reason we have the holiday season in the first place has gotten lost in all the cynicism and commercialism. According to a certain holy book, a baby boy was born in Bethlehem to a couple named Joseph and Mary over 2,000 years ago. That boy grew up to become one of the most influential figures in world history, and continues to be to this day.

And that is why we have Christmas.

P.S. We had a little meeting and decided not to use any of the terms related to the baby boy in the previous paragraph. We weren't sure whether we'd get sued for trademark infringement by some religious or political organization, so it's best to leave things alone.