It蘑菇视频 a Merry, Happy, Christmas, folks!
Ah, ’tis the season to be jolly, but to also be online searching for the best deals.
Online shopping could account for as much as $200 billion in U.S. sales this holiday season.
Heck! When I was a kid, the only online my parents knew, was standing “online” to pick up their layaways at the local department stores.
I long for those days – to some extent.
Not for the shopping. (I was a kid. I longed for the gifts. I was not a fool.)
Christmas has always had all kinds of exotic behaviors.
Angel hair? (Not the pasta. That hazy tree-trimming stuff)
Who came up with the idea of using spun fiberglass as a tree ornament? Find them – then arrest them.
It looked great on our Christmas tree. But it could get on your hands and cut your fingers. I think we only had angel hair once.
Bubble lights? They were forever breaking or refusing to bubble.
They, too, looked nice, but they were sometimes a pain in the posterior.
They also used to make tree ornaments out of some form of glass, that, when they broke, would cut small hands.
I had small hands. I got cut a lot.
I think they stopped making those. If they haven’t, I suggest they should be bundled with Band-Aids.
They used to talk about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
We didn’t have an open fire. And we didn’t have any chestnuts.
I felt cheated!
We did have model trains. My brother Marlin and I each had a set. And one year, we put them beneath our Christmas tree.
They somehow managed to find their way under adults’ feet. As I remember, the torment they caused prevented us from surrounding our trees with Lionel trains more than once.
They could be “dreaming of a white Christmas” all they wanted. I don’t remember any Christmas when I was a kid that resembled one of those Currier and Ives paintings.
Possibly because I used to get so many toys that I didn’t pause long enough to look out of our windows.
If it snowed, I never saw it.
I do feel blessed that my parents (Pearl and Jack Owens) had a knack for buying just the right toys. (Note: I’m giving them credit they might not deserve. I was probably just overjoyed to get any gifts when I was a kid.)
When I was about 8 years old, I got a typewriter for Christmas.
And when I was about 12, I got a tape recorder.
My parents had no idea at the time that they were forming the building blocks for a writer and a TV reporter.
They didn’t care, as long as I kept those blasted trains out from under their feet.
In recent years, Christmas, like most things in America these days, has become embroiled in politics.
On Dec. 7, 2004, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly unveiled something that will live in television infamy – “The War on Christmas.”
O’Reilly took time on his “O’Reilly Factor” to alert his viewers to the “war” in a segment called “Christmas Under Siege.”
Suddenly, O’Reilly’s devotees began trying to force store clerks to say, “Merry Christmas,” instead of “Happy Holidays.”
Nobody, I mean NOBODY had paid any attention to Christmas (holiday) greetings before O’Reilly made it a point to chastise corporate America for supposedly removing Christ from Christmas.
That became a conservative battle cry for years.
It was (and still is) nonsense.
Engaging people with a warm greeting and a sincere smile should never be discouraged, don’t you think?
But that didn’t prevent right-wingers across the country from swearing the people who used the all-encompassing “Happy Holidays” greeting were heathen devil worshippers.
NONSENSE!
Then there was Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, who in December 2013 announced, “By the way, for all of you kids watching at home, Santa is just white.”
Santa is what?
Well, I have news for you – Mickey Mouse is JUST a mulatto. He’s the offspring of an interracial couple.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.