Merry Christmas! ... What Is A Santa Claus

Here's to the big day, and for one that is the merriest to all.

As to the title, ahhh, we got a good one for you on that.

Gather the youngin's around, and lend your ears, for Stanley Newcomb Kenton;

Stan Kenton - What Is A Santa Claus




Merry Christmas!

So, This Is Christmas ...

Last evening, Christmas Eve, NBC (or the local affiliate here) replayed the Christmas classic, 'It's A Wonderful Life'.

Interesting viewing this time around, following an article by Wendell Jamieson, in the NYT last week (Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life).

Was this what adulthood promised?

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

Forget about adulthood.

My dreams, were relinquished as a small child.

This is, probably, my least fun time of year.

Christmas.

Ever since I was a young child, after one particular Christmas, I bemoaned the calendar, as it turned from November, to December.

The avalanche of ads that flooded out, gleaming toys beaming out of the television set, made all more annoying, with the weather, getting colder and colder each day, and all those conned into thinking, that, "OMG! ...Will we have a white Christmas this year?", like that actually adds to the merriment of the day.

Yes, I secretly thought.

Let it snow, so much, so heavy, that Christmas would be muted out.

The snow, would be so dense, so deep, that even that fat jolly guy would be grounded, unable to make his way, dropping down chimneys, leaving behind those not-so-gleaming toys (they never looked as good, in your hands, in your house, as they do in those television ads).

And what kind of person drops down a chimney to deliver something, I thought, as I got a bit older.

Why wasn't he using the door, or a window, even?

And, why was it none of the toys, or gifts left, ever carrying a millimeter of soot on them?

Did he stop and clean them?

Then, there is the weight issue.

First of all, he was fat, really fat, so there was a problem.

None of the stories mentioned anything about grease or Vaseline being used, so he could just slide right down, all those chimneys.

Being that fat, and with all those deliveries to make, you have to wonder about stamina, and what kind of shape such a fat person would be in.

All the stories have him being jolly, going "Ho, Ho, Ho", never anything like he was bent over, gasping for air, like a rescued coal miner.

With a few more years under my belt, I begin to look for news articles, that a fat guy in a funny red suit was found, stuck in a chimney, dead, the victim of a heart attack, a odd-looking, sleigh-like vehicle parked nearby, stuffed with toys.

No such articles did I ever find.

Only more PR for Christmas, the same stories, with slight tweaks, appearing year-after-year, carrying the main, and only, theme, of commercialism.

Buy, Buy, Buy!

If you don't go out, traipse all over downtown, arms stuffed with "presents", that you were just a horrible person.

And, school ...

Oh the burden, all my fellow classmates, chirping like little Christmas birds "What are you getting for Christmas?", or "What did you ask Santa to bring to you?"



Their incessant Christmas promoting stopped as abruptly as a crash-test dummy hitting the dashboard, when I would answer, "A blizzard".

The cookies, and other confections ... The dinners ...

All done, and conducted, imbued with that "Christmas Spirit".

After that incident, Christmas morning for me was like a parole hearing, and I never had enough merits to get sprung from it.

All the relatives, seen only this once per year, coming in-and-out, pinching your cheeks, like you were some good-luck totem standing by the door.

After they all piled in, I would look out the door, longingly, cheeks still stinging for the numerous death grips, for a hint, that first lonely flake of the impending snow tsunami I fervently wished for.

And the cameras, the Super 8's ...

The dreary jobs my relatives held down all year long, gave way to their new careers of being the next Cecille B. DeMille on Christmas, documenting your every move, punctured by their frequent shouts of direction, to, basically, due something stupid for their camera, so all the adults could guffaw until their jaws ached, next time we visited the home of that particular film hot shot.

Why no seasonal mirth, oozing out of every pore?

It goes back to that particular Christmas, when I was around four, or five-years-old.

Oh, I was a junior Mr. Christmas back then.

We couldn't get the decorations up soon enough, fast enough, or early enough.

As Thanksgiving dishes were being washed, I would be rummaging through the closets, pulling out all the Christmas booty.

If the tinsel wasn't in stock at the local stores, I had no patience to wait for the next shipment.

I would, with my little hands, using an older sibling's Exacto knife, spend hours-and-hours, cutting the Reynolds Wrap into tinsel-like strands.



Tangled Christmas Tree Lights?

Heck, I could solve a Rubik's Cube with one hand, while my little fingers unraveled them effortlessly.

Christmas was on the line ... The sooner they could be strung on the always tall, plump, blinding-green pine I would lobby, actually badger, that we get (and, as a slightly older child, I wondered, if it is that we cut down trees on Christmas, why don't we cut down crucifixes on Arbor Day?).

No, it was the annual photo trek, downtown, to see Santa Claus.

You know, where you go to the enormo-department store, stand in line for about an hour, with a zillion other kids, quietly dissing them, confident that Santa, not caring about the others, is going to be at rigid attention with your own Christmas order.

Finally, it was my turn and a single bound landed me on his lap.

After dispensing with my laundry list of gifts I expected, I remembered, suddenly, something I heard my older siblings talking about, so I asked the question.

"Are you really Santa Claus?"

He looked at me, a bit taken back, then leaned forward and whispered in my ear.

"Of course I am ... But let me tell you a secret ..."

OMG! ... Santa was going to tell me a secret, I thought .. How cool was this!

He glanced around for a moment, and then laid it on me.

I was shocked, horrified!

I jumped off his lap, running as fast as I could, tears streaming down my cheeks.

I never told anyone.

I carried it around, like an ocean liner's anchor for years.

Christmas after Christmas came, and went, and I barely noticed.

No, it wasn't the same anymore.

I never had a good Christmas, the day after a Department Store Santa Claus told me that my parents were fake, that they weren't really my parents.

Our Ignorant Dolt of The Week .... Daniel Henninger!

Or: Oh No, Another Pinhead War on Christmas

Boy, if Santa Claus has made up his list, of who's been naughty, and who's been nice, and knowing the penalty attached to the former, if he follows Daniel Henninger's logic, Santa is going to have to strip mine the entire globe to come up with enough coal to stuff in those stockings.

It was a slow week on the Ignorant Dolt front.

We gave some thought to pinning it on our President-Elect, for calling out to Hillary to "C'mon Down", however it isn't official yet, so we may save that for another week.

Henninger is the Deputy Editorial Page Director of the Wall Street Journal, and he penned a column the other day that is a doozy;

Mad Max and the Meltdown: How we went from Christmas to crisis

Notwithstanding the cardboard Santas who seem to have arrived in stores this year near Halloween, the holiday season starts in seven days with Thanksgiving. And so it will come to pass once again that many people will spend four weeks biting on tongues lest they say "Merry Christmas" and perchance, give offense. Christmas, the holiday that dare not speak its name.

Okay, perhaps he's just looking to increase his bookings on the Faux News Network, sitting in the chair next to the Grand Ayatollah of Ignorant Dolts, Bill O'Reilly, so they can swap propaganda on the blazing firefight of their propped-up War on Christmas.

If only it was such pandering ...

Henninger wants to tie in the meltdown of our economy, blaming the non-believers, who by the way, are responsible for the meltdown, as adding a Petraeuseque surge in their War on Christmas.

"This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin -- fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.

One had better explain that."

"What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse. They are the ballast that stabilizes two better-known Rs from the world of free markets: risk and reward.

Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of "Merry Christmas."

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.

Feel free: Banish Merry Christmas. Get ready for Mad Max."

WTF!

Jesus, if he stretched it anymore, his arm would have to pop out of its socket.

Did he stumble on this, a clip showing the GAID O'Reilly, talking with fellow pinhead John Gibson, babbling on-and-on, over-the-top idiocracy (way too many electrolytes!) and say, "I can beat that!"

Matt Corley, over on Think Progress sums it up nicely, saying "After cataloging a series of complex economic factors that do relate to the financial crisis, Henninger concludes that what really went wrong is that “the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America” led to “subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers.”.

From dday;

Got that, secular progressives? Deregulation, predatory lending and corporate greed had nothing to do with this. It's you and your atheist friends who are promoting anarchy and the destruction of morals. If there were only crosses on top of Wall Street skyscrapers, the investment bankers and hedge fund managers inside wouldn't have given in to the temptation of greed. Your 401 (k) might have been saved if you practiced Lent this year.

Thanks a lot, heathens. Good luck heating your home with those Bibles you like to burn.

Hilzoy, on Obsidian Wings predicted that Henninger's tirade "has to be in the running for Dumbest Column Ever." and that "it launches itself off into the great empyrean of stupid."

And, this, from Steve Benen;

And yet, the editors at the WSJ continue to push the envelope in new and mind-numbing directions. The Journal published this piece from Daniel Henninger today, which aims to explain "how we went from Christmas to crisis." I've read the whole piece a few times, trying to understand it. I'm at a loss.

Henninger begins by repeating nonsense about Americans, en masse, being afraid to wish others a "Merry Christmas." This, on its face, is absurd. But he goes much further, connecting this non-existent trend in holiday-related rhetoric to the financial crisis, apparently blaming the prior for the latter: "A nation whose people can't say 'Merry Christmas' is a nation capable of ruining its own economy."

Why anyone would attach their name to such transparent foolishness is a mystery to me. Why anyone would publish such inanity is even harder to understand.

Foolishness and Insanity?

Oh yeah, royally, and that pushes Daniel Henninger into the winner's circle, for The Garlic's "Ignorant Dolt of The Week!"


Bonus Great War On Xmas Riffs

Wikipedia: Christmas controversy

Media Matters for America: War on Christmas

Wonkette: A Festivus Miracle: No Fannie/Freddie Foreclosures! (Until January 9)

Liza Featherstone: Merry Christmas, Bill O'Reilly!

Nicole Belle: The O'Reilly Fatuity: The War on Christmas has morphed into the War on Christians

David Kiley: O'Reilly's War on Christmas: Truth Takes a Holiday Again

Eric Boehlert: Battling the homosexuals, liberals and Jews, Bill O'Reilly and friends are making America safe for Christmas

O'Reilly Gears Up Next War; Says Will Battle To Save "Little Christmas"; Calls For New Laws and Mandatory Fines; Doesn't Hesitate To Make Up False Charges To Broadcast His Point

Merry Christmas!

Oscar Peterson - A Child Is Born

Happy Holidays - All of Them!

Good Evening Garlic Fans ...

Happy Holidays - All of Them!

We're giving into the demands of the season (cooking, family, et all) and taking a day, or two off (barring breaking news ripe for the pickings).

Being that is has been a rough month on The Garlic's homefront, both time and energy were lacking to come up with new Christmas satire this year.

So, pay attention to our daily feature - Garlic History ... On This Day - sitting over there in the right sidebar. We came up with a few goods last year and you can revisit those posts, or, if you are a new reader, it's your lucky day.

So, have yourselves a very Merry Christmas, with your family and friends and here's hoping peace and love fill the air.

Happy Holidays!
Peace
JTD

Watch and Listen to Diana Krall, swinging away on Jingle Bells

Happy Holidays! ... Coming Soon - The 12 Days of Dubya

Good Morning Garlic Fans!

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

We hope it's a great day for you, wherever you are ... And come tonight, it will get even better.

The Garlic will kick off it's rendition of the "The 12 Days of Christmas", appropriately titled "The 12 Days of Dubya" this evening, beginning with Day 1 and counting down until January 6, 2007. Posting will be approximately 11PM each night.

Be sure to check out (or, warm-up, as you will) with yesterday’s post of Twas The Night Before The New Congress, or add some mirth to your day with Garlic Christmas Special - David Sedaris Christmas Letter.

So enjoy your day and once again, Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Joyeux Noel!

Felice Navidad!

The Garlic wants to wish all a very happy, healthy Merry Christmas.

Check in over the holiday lull, as we are planning on posting, and with a holiday surprise or two.

Once again, thank you for visiting The Garlic and have a very happy holiday

Peace

JTD