Merry Christmas, Everyone...Big or Small, Merry Christmas to ALL

©2017 by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

 

 Merry Christmas, Everyone! 

Christmas Then

When I was a  boy, Christmas came once a year. For a week.   As children, we waited, with abated breath, it seemed,  forever. With much anticipation and excitement building,  we waited for the winter holidays, the traditional Christmas concert, then the holidays, a few days free of school, time to build snowmen, play in mountains of snow, and go ice-skating. On real ice. Outside,  on the driveway turned into a rink, on a real community rink down the road, or  right down the bumpy ice on the Oliver Creek if it was frozen enough.
       We thawed out and waited.  We waited for Christmas Eve,  and  green and red-wrapped chocolates, sweet oranges from Japan, sparkling glass decorations and tinsel placed with care  on an always-real Christmas tree. In vivid imaginations, visions of  Christmas were brightly wrapped  secrets,   presents galore. Christmas cake. Sugar cookies. Twisted, rock-hard candy that looked like it was snipped with scissors, and candy canes striped like the North Pole where Santa lives.  
        We wondered how Santa drove the reindeer from the North Pole too,  as we eagerly listened  to George the Porter , Santa's helper broadcasting on the  radio in *Fort William  to see if Santa was making good time on Christmas Eve. We wondered how Santa could land on slippery, snow-covered steep roofs in the moonlight. How he ever squeezed down skinny chimneys safely.  Into burning fireplaces.  Without getting his white beard and eyebrows singed.
       We wished for new, shiny hockey  skates, hockey-sticks, and real shin-pads. Skis. New mitts. Stuff from the Eaton's and Simpson Sears catalogues.  Folding jackknives with pearl handles. New boots.  New bicycles. Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers belts, realistically-holstered noisy cap guns. Cowboy outfits for the boys. Sleighs, white figure-skates, dolls, ribbons and bows, new clothes, tiny furniture and dollhouses for the girls.  Everything was to arrive overnight by special delivery from Santa.   Imagine that, but only for a week.

And somehow, we knew what Christmas was really about. The birth of Christ.

Christmas Now

Zoom ahead decades. Too many decades. Now Christmas retailing begins on television right after Hallowe'en. And after Thanksgiving. And after Black Friday retailing madness. 50-70% off everything that was 70% overpriced all year. Profit. Business. Receiving instead of giving. Overspending. Paying the bills after the spending binge. The eternal headache of crowds of people in malls frantically searching endlessly for the perfect gift. 
     Is that what  Christmas was  intended to be?   Is it politically-incorrect to remind others of faith and belief in Christ?  The real reason for the season?   The passing of traditions is painful, but declining  faith, denial of faith,  the reason for the season  --is unbelievably sad.  Ouch. 
      But have no fear, we can still have OUR faith and traditions of Christmas, and enjoy them too. Not because of, but in spite of —modern trends and unwanted social manipulation.

The Solution.

I know it's hard to remember why we have Christmas, it's not very trendy, but forget 'spending' and shopping for a moment. Ignore advertising and commercial profit. Reawaken the imagination. Return to the dreams we once had. Is it a bad idea to push aside 'retailing' hype for a few days and dream?  No.   Is it old-fashioned and selfish to wish a week of Christmas inherited from older, better times instead of four months of mind-numbing commercials?  Wishful thinking?  No. It is human nature to expect better.
      Admittedly, we did not always receive the gifts imagined, the fancy toys coveted. Fact is, in reality, occasionally, in some  tough economic times, we had few gifts at all. But no matter; we still dreamed. The excitement of the season was alive and genuine with home-made gifts, paper decorations, the love of family, friends, and neighbours and snowball fights and snow forts and igloos.  The smell of fresh bread, pies, cookies and turkey baking early in the morning.
     The anticipation and surprises we did find under  quaint Charlie Brown  Christmas trees (taller, we remember)  made up for anything and everything. It was Christmas, after all, and we had music, excitement, love, visitors— and each other. Warm, crackling fires in the fireplace. Visions and imaginations unfulfilled were reserved for next year—and the ones after that. Immense and almost inexplicable satisfactory visions— for decades after that. 
Peace of mind and faith for the future—are the solution. Don't forget some eggnog. 
Merry Christmas everyone...big or small, Merry Christmas to ALL.

#

Is that Incoming I hear?
 

 *Now  'Thunder Bay', Ontario

Black Friday: A Deadly and Contagious Retail Disease

Where are your piggy-bank savings going this holiday season?

You and your piggy-bank savings
money are being persuaded to part company by big business unethically --yet again but with holidays coming on, that would be nothing new. 
How about losing your very life, your self-respect, your human dignity and conscience?
Black Friday, the  contagious disease of retail greed from south of the border is showing up  in Canadian retail centers.  

The symtoms of Black Friday disease are those of  unheralded insanity which include veritable stampedes of  insane, greedy shoppers, laughing greedy retailers, and inevitably, trampled people,  scores of  innocent people being hurt, violence, gun play, and even death.

Has corporate ethics have reached a new all-time low?  Is it now considered 'good business'  to promote total shopping madness, hand-to-hand combat on the retail floor, and idiocy--all  in the name of corporate profit?
How did "Thanksgiving", a time for family, reflection and above all, Giving Thanks, ever turn into such an ugly, greedy, and dangerous  retailing event?


A retail sales event is "just a sale"?  No longer.

On Black Friday last year in the Land of the Free  there were shootings.  A man was killed, stomped to death by an enraged herd of  greedy, lunatic shoppers out of control on corporate advertising steroids.  
Where does the madness end?  Apparently not at the Canadian  border. 
Canadian retailers are quickly adapting the same greedy, mindless and idiotic marketing strategy.
What is that underlying marketing "strategy"?  Simple greed, greedier, and greediest, not necessarily in that order. 
" Promote lack of logic, promote lack of  thought. Generate maximum retail hype and excitement.  Get the shoppers lined up like dumb cattle  with endless expectations to be fulfilled or not,-- and push sales and profit while the getting is good, no matter what the human cost."

In 2011 it quickly became apparent the corporate sector promoting this disastrous retailing practice  learned nothing from the death and mayhem observed in 2010.   The problem  became worse.  


This year, a man in Virginia  was walked over by shoppers as he died. Shoppers walked around, and over him. Nobody bothered to help, they were busy shopping on Black Friday.
A grandfather trying to rescue his small grandson from being trampled in the madness of an opening stampede  was put down, bludgeoned and bloody by a security guard.  On Black Friday.
There were shots fired in other incidents.  On Black Friday.
A certified madwoman shopper used pepper spray on some 20  other  customers to 'gain advantage  to 'get there first, grab the most, whether it was a 72"  flat-screen television, a package of a dozen disposable diapers, a coloring-book,  or a handful of  junk jewellery.  On Black Friday.
Was her vicious attack on others to gain "50% off" ?  No matter.   What she was 'getting first'  or the 'discount'   isn't the issue.   As a 'shopper', encouraged by Black Friday madness and incited by corporate greed,  she deemed  it 'necessary' to use pepper spray on other shoppers that were equally insane, trying to 'get the deals' first.  
Death and mayhem. It happened again on this Black Friday.



People were hurt. The question must be:  What is the matter with these people?   Where does this idiocy end?  
When will retailers take responsibility and curtail the dangerous practice of encouraging the mob mentality and  'racing to the counter' openings?  
Criminal charges should be filed, but will they be? Not likely. It was, after all, Black Friday, time to persuade people to 'shop' like idiot fools and help Corporate North America  make  more profit.


HERE at Incoming Bytes  we would like people to shake their collective heads and  start thinking for themselves.  There can be no excuse for people to give up their dignity, respect for others,  sense of humanity, or their lives  for a "good" deal,  Black Friday retail scam  or not.
 
As for business and the retailing set?  Shame on them.



that's my story and I'm sticking to it