It is official: The holiday shopping season is here. If you were within a mile of a mall last Saturday, you know what I am talking about.
Ah, yes, the signs that Christmas, that holiest of times for Christians throughout the world, is coming... people about to snap looking for parking spaces... mothers threatening to kill each other over a stupid toy... unscrupulous retailers tripling the price of that toy just because they can... oh, it makes me want to SING! HALLELUJAH! HAAAAL-LAY-LOOOOOOO-YAHHH!
I consider myself fortunate (HA!!) to be part of the retail work force this Christmas season. Thanks to a bevy of student loans and a full-time job where my salary gives me a first-hand understanding of the word "blighted," I currently experience the thrill of working for a very major retailer, where I sell such popular items for Christmas presents as water heaters and sump pumps.
But while I anxiously await the intensification of the holiday shopping season this year, I know that this year will not give me near the amount of joyous memories (which I will be describing excitedly to therapists for years) that my prior retail job did at Christmas.
You see, I worked at Toys "R" Us for five Christmas seasons, to pay for college (the part that wasn't paid for by those spiffy loans). Boy, if good ol' Toys "R" Us ain't the place to spend Christmas, I don't know what is!
Note to the slow and/or dumb: I am being sarcastic! Except the part about needing therapy. That is undoubtedly true. And you want to know why I probably need therapy? All I have to say is this: I was at Toys "R" Us during the Power Rangers craze.
One of my duties was to help unload the trucks. This is not a job that normally has an audience, but we were the top show in town. Whenever we got a shipment in, parents would observe us from the storeroom door, watching us with their Power Ranger-hungry eyes. Whenever I would go out onto the sales floor, I would be mobbed, and people would ask me, quivering:
"Have you got any off the truck yet?"
When we did get any Power Rangers in... well, I'll just say it got really interesting. And violent. Critics often claim that the Power Rangers show made children prone to violence, due to the fighting on the show. I do not know if I believe that, but I do have evidence that the show did cause parents to act violently. I once witnessed two professionally-dressed mothers, one wearing a yellow dress, the other wearing a red pants suit, fight each other over a "Yellow Ranger--Trini" action figure:
"Hey, that was my yellow ranger, excuse me!"
"Uh, I don't think so. I have it."
"Why you BITCH..."
And then they went at it, publicly smacking each other over a piece of plastic. I am not making any of this up.
It seems like every year, there is a toy that makes people go wacko because my God they HAVE to have it for their kids. There was Tickle Me Elmo and Sleep and Snore Ernie over the past couple of years. I especially appreciate the irony that people were fighting over these toys in stores, and reselling them at many, many times their intended price -- when Elmo and Ernie usually promote values like kindness and sharing on "Sesame Street."
That contradiction is emblematic of the whole contradiction between Christmas and commercialism. Giving Christmas gifts as a gesture of good-will and love is very appropriate for the celebration of bringing a peaceful, loving Savior into the world. A parent trying to get something their child would really love is wonderful. It's nice even if you don't believe in the whole Christ thing.
But when people become blatant goobers in the quest to get little Johnny a Furby (this year's Christmas craze -- a stuffed animal thing that moves and looks like a bug-eyed "Gremlin") or whatever, that flies in the face of everything that Christmas and goodness stand for. The holiday season is not the time for people to take a leave of their moral standing and become blatant blood-thirsty capitalists.
So this year, when joining the masses at Meadowood, shop with a smile, and keep in mind what this whole season is supposed to mean. I guarantee -- it will make your holidays better, and it can only help those around you.
That is, if you can even find a parking place at Meadowood. If you do find a space, sing with me: HAAAAL-LAY-LOOOOOOO-YAHHH!
Jimmy Boegle, a fifth-generation Nevadan, says this column was brought to you by the number four and the letter "K." Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays.