I realized yesterday that Christmas Music makes you shop. Every store starts to play the same music – or not-so-different variations on it – on the same day and every person on the planet starts shopping on that same day and keeps at it until just after Christmas, frenzied as a squirrel who can’t remember where he buried his nuts. This is not a coincidence.
I’m sure that without the Christmas Music, people would go to The Home Depot and buy the thing they came for and go home. There would be no OPEN LATE FOR YOU!; POWER BUY! (spotted at The Bay); PRE-CHRISTMAS BLOW-OUT!; GET IT NOW! AND THEN YOU CAN RELAX! attitude among the general buying public.
But with the Christmas music playing, you go to buy an extension cord and then you pick up 10 other items you did not think you were considering buying, from the “GREAT GIFTS!” section. The car turns, seemingly of its own volition, into the mall on the way home. You spend two hours and hundreds of dollars – but it was all on gifts! To celebrate, you stay in the mall a while and enjoy a peppermint froozie chai soprano christmasy caramocha (Tall) and watch the children bawl at Santa and listen to the piped-in Christmas Music.
When you get home after negotiating an out-of-court settlement with a jerk in the parking lot and giving 7 people the finger in traffic, you’re pretty beat. You want to wait for the mail man just to lay a smackdown on him for not bringing you any cards or parcels. You feel dangerous. You put on the Bing Crosby but somehow at your house it’s not as festive. You get back in the car and turn on XMAS FM. You drive, and drive, and drive. It feels good. You stop for a Christmas Burger at McDonald’s. You’re loving it. You buy happy meals for your imaginary children and keep the toys for stocking stuffers. A billboard reads, “help the United Way.” You stop for more gas. You sigh with contentment when you enter the convenience store in the gas station. They sell snacks and wiper fluid and little, fuzzy, magic gloves and they are playing Christmas music, that Boney M Christmas album. You want to stay here, curl up behind the counter in the arms of the kindly store clerk. Instead, you buy a package of 10 Christmas Scratch n’ Wins. Maybe some lucky friend will win a million! Maybe you’ll keep the tickets for you, but you think that would be selfish. You remind yourself that if you miss the deadline for Christmas, God will be very, very angry with you. Your children will hate you, your wife will divorce you, your mother-in-law will have enough evidence to finally condemn you and all the people you call friends will start saying mean, cheap things behind your back.
Yesterday, we bought a Barbie ™ er, advent calendar. It’s a Christmas New Year’s Countdown calendar, but it seems to be modelled quite closely after an advent calendar. It has little pieces of chocolate behind numbered doors. It cost $1.78. I will not be eating the chocolate.
Some information: smoked, spiced gouda does not melt so well. I thought it would melt well, but I neglected to notice until too late that it is processed. It does that melting-like-plastic thing. Not so appetizing unless you are camping, which I am not.
And! Neil Gaiman has an online journal. If Neil Gaiman was a cheese, he would be Port Wine Stilton. Elegant, sharp, full of flavour.
