By David Rose
I grow weary of the struggle. I’ve done so many tours of duty they can no longer be counted, or distinguished, one from another. We’ve been fighting since the very beginning of this conflict and I see no ending for it.
Yes, Virginia, there is a war on Christmas, and we are losing it, losing it badly.
There was a time when Christmas and the other holiday existed in harmony. Each one in its appointed place on the calendar. Sometime during the second week of December the Sears Christmas catalog came out and heralded in the beginning of that season. And then, like the Blob in that early Steve McQueen movie, Christmas began to creep.
We tried appeasement, sacrificed Winter Solstice and Pearl Harbor Day, and set up our defense at Black Friday. With Thanksgiving at our backs, the position seemed to be a strong one.
We got complacent, took our eye off the ball. Christmas out-flanked us and over-ran the open ground between Thanksgiving and Halloween like a Mongol hoard across the steps of Asia. Thanksgiving was tossed into the dust bin of history along with Candlemas and Talk Like a Pirate Day.
We’ve slowed Christmas at Halloween, but our ramparts of moldy hay bales and rotted pumpkins cannot hold long. If these lines break, it will be a straight shot to the 4th of July. The 4th isn’t likely to put up much of a fight what with everybody being out at the lake.
If Christmas gets past Memorial Day, forms an alliance with Easter, and links up with the January White Sales, all is lost. We will have to listen to Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, 24/7/365.
As an artist, David Rose, won both the Arkansas Governor’s Award and the Delta Award. His works are in the collections of Tim Robbins, Bruce Springsteen, & Susan Sarandon.
As a writer he flunked every English class he ever sat in. Born in Woodstock, NY, he is very much a product of the 1960s and never really managed to escape that fabled decade. Visit Rose at www.amazon.com/David-Malcolm-Rose/e/B019GBJI9C/ and on Facebook.
