November runs into December and December runs into money. Time to buy this year’s Christmas gifts with next year’s money.
Christmas is when we take the milk of human kindness out of the freezer. Tis’ the season when gifts are gladly given, happily received and cheerfully refunded.
How many of you are old enough to remember you quit Christmas shopping when you ran out of money? But then someone invented the credit card and you have been in debt ever since. The ideal Christmas card would be money but you can’t charge it. I can’t wait for next football season. By then, Peggy’s Christmas will be paid for.
I have given Ole Scrap Iron many gifts, most of them are just what a woman needs to exchange for what she really wants. So remember men, Santa Claus may be the world’s best navigator, but he’s also the worst judge of size and color. No wonder Santa is a jolly old fellow…daddy pays for it all and Santa gets all the credit.
As for that little old bull shooter, me, I want Santa to bring me an electric drill so I can drill a hole in Peggy’s biscuits and pour syrup in the hole. Did you ever try to sop syrup with a sidewalk.
This year the toy hotter than a two-dollar pistol is a nine dollar battery operated hamster on wheels called a Zhu Zhu pet. Remember the Cabbage Patch doll and Tickle Me Elmo? They were the goldmine in the sky way back when. Now what every child had to have is in a million closets unloved and unclaimed.
Every Christmas there’s a new pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that has mothers standing in line at Wal-Mart or searching the Internet, for that elusive toy that will make their children’s Christmas merry.
Christmas toys like the funnies in your newspaper and the music you listen to have changed dramatically since Santa brought me a Buck Rogers suit. Back then streetcars were the primary source of transportation in Columbia. The State newspaper was on Main Street, all the movie theaters were downtown, and you could get a double dip ice cream cone for a buffalo nickel.
The toys were different then. Now they are as old fashioned as “spin the bottle.” There were tricycles, red wagons, Monopoly sets, cowboy suits, cap pistols, BB guns, yo-yo’s, dolls that would wet and say mama, jump ropes, erector sets, boots with a pocket that held a jack knife, chemistry sets, aviator helmets with goggles. Before Star Wars and Captain Kirk we had our science fiction heroes too; Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
The day of Saturday matinees, comics in your newspaper and music with words you understood are all history. You still have Peanuts, Blondie, Baby Blues, but you now have political comic strips. Everyone complains about Rush Limbaugh on the radio. No one complains about Doonesbury in the funnies. I miss Lil’ Abner, Pogo, Steve Canyon’s The Gumps, The Far Side, Bringing Up Father, Dick Tracy, The Kats and Jammer Kids, Mary Worth (like death and taxes) is always with us. The Guiding Light started on radio in 1937 before moving to TV and soon All My Children will be history. But Mary Worth is the longest running funny in the papers. Like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going and going and going…
December is the month radio stations play music with words you can understand. There’s no other time of the year (unless you have a satellite radio) that you can listen to songs by Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Doris Day, Patti Page, Frank Sinatra and the Big Bands. But there’s no antibiotic for hearing Bing sing White Christmas or Elvis sing Blue Christmas a hundred times. But come December 26, it’s back to listening to purple, indigo and lavender singing, “Sally let your bangs hang down so.”
At my house this year there will be no cap pistols, dolls, or little red wagons under the tree. There are some still out there who remember getting apples and oranges for Christmas. I wonder what your children and grandchildren would think if they found a banana wrapped in pretty paper under the tree Christmas morning?