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Jewish World Review
Dec. 12, 2006
/ 22 Kislev, 5767
Tis the season for chaos
By
Brad Dickson
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Tis the season. The season for long lines, impatient people, and
occasional news reports of fatal shootings over parking spaces. A season of
greed, gluttony, and simmering rage as multitudes of Starbucks-fueled shoppers,
many ill with colds and flu, battle it out for merchandise, while coughing,
sneezing, sneering and cursing at one another.
I want to make it clear, I enjoy the holidays. Ok, that was a lie. It seems
like the politically correct thing to say. But you’ll have to excuse me, I
just spent ninety minutes on a trip to the store that would normally have taken
half an hour. After fighting heavy holiday traffic I made it to the retail
establishment, one of those places where you pay to be a member so you can
enjoy the privilege of spending 4.95 for a drum of shampoo that will last you
through 2012.
But that beats the alternative. Never a fan of malls, the last time I
voluntarily went to one when I wasn’t staring at a birthday or holiday deadline
they still featured organ stores. Now malls feature elaborate, tricked out food
courts because Americans are so fat we can’t possibly walk fifty feet from
Sears to the record store without stopping off for a slice of pizza and a
half-gallon of Haagen-Daaz.
So we shop, with pizza cheese running down our chins, crust dangling from
our hair, our noses dripping onto for sale items, having to endure the inane “I
Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” for the five millionth time, screaming into
our cell phones to be heard over that repugnant dog barking “Jingle Bells.”
If you have not been to a big city mall in mid to late December picture a
European soccer riot if the rioters were less civilized and carrying brightly
colored bags.
A couple years ago a shopping mall Santa in California was fired for making
an obscene gesture at a teenager who heckled him, and to me this sums up what
this season has devolved into.
I miss the old days when stores weren’t so crowded, things weren’t so
commercialized and hectic and people weren’t so angry. I miss the days when
store Santas were conscientious about their work, and little kids didn’t leave “
jolly” St. Nick’s lap screaming in bloody terror over the alcohol-fueled
missives of an embittered man in a red suit, sending our tykes off to years of
therapy.
I miss the days when this country wasn’t as overpopulated and we could
actually travel from Point A to Point B this time of year without encountering
mass chaos. When people seemed happy during the holidays, when excitable,
healthy children with their rosy red cheeks aglow ran up the mall down escalator.
Now our children have piercings through their cheeks and are so obese they
make it halfway up the down escalator before running out of breath and
collapsing into fat, tattooed, illiterate heaps.
I long for an era when people were considerate of one another and respectful
of strangers. Now the stores are battlegrounds, domestic Fallujah’s, only
the poison gas is dispensed by fake-smiling, Botoxed, Stepford women at perfume
counters.
I pine for a time when mall parking garages didn’t turn into demolition
derbies and cacophonies of honking horns, screeching brakes, blasting stereos, car
alarms and motorists who feel their rights have been violated shouting
expletives in 13 languages and threatening to strangle one another with their “
Peace On Earth” bumper stickers.
If malls were POW camps the U.N. Security Council would step in and shut them
down for operating under inhumane conditions.
I miss yesteryear when at least some folks did their Hanukkah and Christmas
shopping early, and didn’t wait for the “biggest shopping day(s) of the year”
when the stores basically turn into raging cauldrons of hate. There has to
be a better way.
I’ll be doing the rest of my shopping online.
Scrooge was a visionary.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
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JWR contributor Brad Dickson was a monologue staff writer for The Tonight Show With Jay Leno for 13 years. His latest book, "Maybe Life's Just Not That Into You: When You feel Like the World's Voted You Off" will be out shortly. Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund
JWR.).
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