The Christmas Eve Inflatable Lawn Santa Massacre of 2021
The local paper or, at least, the remnants of a local paper that now relies largely on the national chain that bought it for news and an aging population for its sales, reported on our avenue this very morning. Several blocks down, a woman set up one of those inflatable Santa Clauses and gifted others anonymously to four of her neighbours. Some of these caught the gaudy spirit and purchased inflatable Santas (surely on sale by now) for other neighbours, so that nearly every house on that block now boasts the same balloonish seasonal sentinels. I had planned on a morning walk to see the streets in snow before the unseasonable weather melts and washes it away later today and so I headed straight down the street. What greeted me when I arrived at that final stretch of the avenue was not pleasant.
One Santa stood upright. The other Kringles were crumbled on the snowy ground, plastic corpses in some Yuletide massacre. One lay beside his Christmas comrade, an inflatable Grinch. The winter's rage could not cool my blood more. Oh, the humanity! The clausality!
Was the sole standing St. Nick the winner of some battle for the saintly title, the vile final Claus who'd left the others subordinate? Had the Omicron Variant spread to the inflatable folk? Was I at last seeing evidence of the "War On Christmas" touted by some social conservatives and obstructed followers of Faux News?*
A little ways up the road, a man silently shoveled wet snow from his driveway.
I walked on.
.
.
.
*Which, by the way, STFU with your manufactured grievance. No one in the west has tried to take Christmas away from you since the Puritans banned the celebration some centuries back. People who greet the happiest season by angrily demanding the "right" to wish people "Merry Christmas" instead of "Seasons Greetings" or what have you are rarely, in my experience, defending a right which they never lost. What they want is the right to demand that everyone else say it, regardless of our religious affiliations or inclinations. And I've seen some self-proclaimed followers of the Prince of Peace become downright hostile over the matter. Let me be clear here: you can wish me Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas, Hanukkah Sameach, give me Jolly Generic Greetings for the season, offer hope for warmth and light at Solstice, invite me to your Eid Al-Fatr celebrations (which occasionally fall this time of year, though not right now), offer blessings for Kwanzaa, or whatever you feel like. I'm good. I'm more than good! I'm pleased you wish me happiness! I will do likewise. Sometimes that wish will take the form of a "Merrie Christmas" or its conventional British counterpart, "Happy Christmas!" Sometimes it will not. But if you crankily insist that everyone else give a specific greeting or if you participate in a culture that puts local businesses on a public "naughty list" because they say, say, "Happy Holidays," I will insist on my right to dismiss you as a butt-head.
Um. Merrie Christmas and a Happy New Year to you!