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One year my well-intentioned but pushy aunt gave my brother a sweatshirt with huge Santa Claus face on it. She thought it would blend in well with his collection of old-fashioned Santa Clauses (more like Father Christmas). It didn't. My sister-in-law took it as a regift. We've heard about tacky Christmas sweaters; it's almost a trope now, and there's plenty of parody and satire about them all over the Internet. Why is it at this time of year that people will decide it's cool to wear sweaters that look like they could wake the dead? I remember seeing a woman going to a Black Friday event decked out in what looked like a sweatshirt festooned with garlands and ornaments. (I was expecting mini ornaments as earrings to totally coordinate the outfit. No such luck.) Perhaps it was the only day she could honestly wear it without making herself a victim of physical and online mockery. 
And let's not get into holiday bathroom décor. Most people find those fuzzy toilet lid covers abhorrent, but put a snowman on it, and it suddenly becomes cute. Ew … I'm one to gush over cute pictures of baby animals, but my goodness, how many cute and fluffy and so heartwarming Christmas movies, bastardizations of the uber-Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life, can the Hallmark Channel show? You know, movies with titles like, Bonnie Wants Santa to Bring Mommy a New Boyfriend in Coal Mining Country Town. 
I'm no Scrooge and I'm not trying to sound like an elitist snob, but people tend to forget that the uber-Christmas story, A Christmas Carol, is actually a rather dark piece exposing the social injustices of the Victorian period. The one version with Alastair Sim pretty much captures the atmosphere of the original and contains scenes that sentimentalized versions omit, such as the frightening children, allegorical representations of Want and Ignorance, hidden under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. 
Sometimes I'm not sure what we are celebrating in our holiday mountains of stuff 'n fluff. Sometimes I want to close my eyes and wish it were gone. And if I have to go to one more store and listen to one more soupy scoopy version of “Winter Wonderland” or “Rock Around the Christmas Tree” … Grr ... But then sometimes, not often enough, I wish that I could recapture my own Hallmark movie moment that occurred when I was seven or eight, one the way home from midnight Mass, when I was sure I did hear Santa's sleigh bells on a cloudless Christmas Eve. Snow covered the ground. And it was so still and quiet that I felt I could hear the air sing. 
Check out our holiday specials at bijouworld.com and I'm sure you'll find something that makes a certain organ right above the legs sing. |
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