December 17, 2005

Merry Christmas One & All...and be nice while you're at it.....

People in a Blue Light Special Frenzy as a T-Rex looks down on them AP photo

May every lighted Christmas tree
And every candle's glow
Reflect the joy of Jesus' birth so long, long ago
And though the world is troubled now,
May we celebrate his birth
With a day of love for everyone;
A day of peace for everyone.

Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, one and all

May your Christmas Day be brighter
Than the brightest star above
May the holidays enfold you
With an everlasting love
May the happy songs of Christmas
Fill your home with special cheer
And echo loud o'er every land
Throughout the coming year.

Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, one and all

Copyright 1987, C. Keith Haugen "Merry Christmas One & All" is another in the series of Christmas songs by Keith Haugen and it was recorded and released in 1988 by Island Viking, in an a cappella recording by Keith and the Sugar Cane Express barbershop quartet. This song can be heard on Aloha Joe dot com

this is how its supposed to be...people being all sweet and nice to you after all its Christmas time right? WRONG!!!!How many of you have been trampled, cussed at, run off the road, while being given "the wave"... Its pervasive, from the White house to my house, (Woody! Stop doing THAT! said this loving shrew of a wife last night)Grumpiness and trash behavior reigns insted of Peace on Earth.

So I laughed at this peice by Patti Davis in the Web edition of Newsweek and I thought Id repost it here. We have all seen this and felt this way...

The Mean Season

The holidays are supposed to be merry and bright. Sadly, it’s more likely to be scary and fights.
By Patti Davis
Newsweek


We've all seen the images of shoppers stampeding over each other on "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving. We might even be tempted to laugh at the woman who lost her wig during an early morning melee of shoppers gone mad. But the laughter stops when we realize how widespread this bad behavior has become.

There have been other stories of fights breaking out over limited supplies of bargain merchandise, of unruly shoppers being pepper sprayed by police at a Wal Mart in Texas. Here in California, I watched a local news broadcast from a store opening where a wave of people rushed in and one man was knocked to his knees. Fortunately, he wasn't trampled. People at least had the courtesy to stampede around him. But clearly their courtesy didn't extend to stopping and helping him to his feet. I thought that surely the reporter would comment on this hooliganism. It was right there in front of her. Nope. The news story was about sales, the economy and the hopes of storeowners that eager shoppers like these would bring a prosperous holiday season for corporate America. The man,who was hardly young...struggled to his feet and walked out of camera range, with no mention being made of the fact that he was literally knocked to the ground and no one helped him up.

A friend of mine stopped her car at a crosswalk the other day for a man with two children. The children were young, they were taking a while to cross, and the woman behind her began honking her horn and gesturing wildly to my friend to go. Apparently swerving around children in a crosswalk seemed perfectly reasonable to this woman, since she was obviously in a hurry and that's all that mattered.

"It's this time of year," my friend said. "People are just awful during the holidays."

People are just awful during the holidays. This is something most of us have probably acknowledged more than a few times. But to me, that's the most disturbing part that many of us now consider the holiday season the mean season.

Regardless of religious beliefs or faith, the holiday season was and is formed by spiritual markers. The emphasis is supposed to be on kindness, generosity, helping others, an awareness that there are more important things than Neiman Marcus catalogs and being first in line for a $200 laptop at Circuit City. I'm not even going to ask when we lost sight of these themes, because who in the world could figure that out?

What I would like to suggest, though, is that we don't become so complacent about this yearly upsurge in meanness that we allow it to keep festering. If it gets any worse, we’ll find ourselves in October asking those near and dear to us, "Have you prepared for the war yet? November is almost here."

It's easy to make excuses for the increase in hostility. We say things like, "Well, the holidays are stressful because of family and relationships." OK, I get that. But does shoving past people in stores and berating hard working salespeople alleviate the stress? It hardly seems like an antidote to me.

Or we say, "Everyone has so much to do. There just isn't enough time. People are rushed." And how exactly does acting rude and belligerent somehow put more minutes into the day?

Another common excuse is worries about money will there be enough for all the gifts that must be purchased? Here’s an infallible piece of logic: if you rear end the car in front of you, mow down pedestrians because you’re in a hurry, or injure another shopper in a store brawl, it’s probably going to cost you a lot more than that Xbox 360 you wanted to buy.

Let"s stop making excuses for the mayhem and madness that have come to characterize what is supposed to be a spiritual, searching and, dare I say, holy time of year. What if, whenever someone is horribly rude and hostile, we said something like, "I hope you have a warm and meaningful holiday"? I might give that a try. And then run away really fast before they knock me down or run over me with their shopping cart.