Christmas Time is a coming, Christmas Time’s a coming!… Ever get stuck with a Christmas carol repeating itself over and over again, one of those new catchy tunes, like Redrider’s version of the Chipmunk’s hit Christmas Rock (one of my favorite x-mas ditties).
At least it looks like Christmas outside, I think, pulling on my totally impenetrable, many-pocketed portable shelter I call a winter coat. Only – 10 C, but with winds of 5-10 kph, oooohh, shudder, uyugh, its colder than yesterday and you know its gonna get colder by December, than Jan (and so on and on).
I check out the local department store and notice that everything’s on special (but the prices are the same!). See the commercials now on TV, they’re pushing you not to buy black socks again this year, a bit of relief from plain old buy…buy…buy!! advertisements of the last 100 years or so.
Making it to the stores ahead of time just to see Santa must have been a terrifying experience for Santa, like, how do you fit a pony down the chimney? That Santa’s quite the logistics expert, remembering who is naughty and nice is hard to do, especially these days.
Around this time of year about a month before Christmas and all through the retail market, store managers are gleefully counting their money, whilst blue collar workers toss fitfully in their sleep, dreaming of the next 10 month personal deficit – where’s Santa during all this. Lucky guy, he gets to have holidays 364 days of the year, while poor Mrs. Clause has to put up with the old geezer all year round.
Well, Christmas does have its virtues, especially when you become the receiver of all those black pairs and much needed holly patterned shorts with the peephole in the back (oops, put them on backwards again). Perhaps, one year, everyone will come together in peace (but at what price?).
Sometimes, it takes a special present for that loved one to make Christmas seem like Christmas again. Personal presents are better but I like it when a present is memorable and made just for you. Like these Christmas gift ideas:
-A record player for your 40+ parents or even an 8 track player with tracks from Elvis and Wayne Newton
-Or…an Atari or Commodore home computer for your 40+ children, just to remind them that technology was once young at heart
-You can bake a tofu cake with sushi flavored icing for your far east friends
-You can buy either a cookbook or the book of Kama Sutra for that newly wed couple down the street, who seem to argue constantly about what to eat or do at night
-You can have hand made sealskin mittens for you liberal bleeding heart animal loving European friends, killed this year
-Or how about a remote control ‘with 101 buttons for your couch potato brother and a 10 year subscription toTV Guide along with the listing for every hockey game in the world.
-A flu shot for your grandparents, or better still, a condom with suspenders and a tab of Viagra to boot for good old grandpa, that way they’ll both be happy
-A personal debit machine in your kitchen for all your freeloading buddies and extended family members
-(This one’s nice) send a Christmas tree to your Inuit friends up North past the treeline
-Perhaps a set of front teeth for your favorite hockey player
-This one’s for me (a VISA card with no limit)
All in all, Christmas is best when kept personal and under budget.
Ed note: Rez Notes is no longer written by Neil Diamond, formerly the Cree Nation’s foremost gossip monger. We can’t tell you who or what is writing Rez Notes in order to protect the guilty. The writer will be outed in the future..
