Hanukkah is over, winter officially started yesterday and ready or not, here comes Christmas. Are you ready? Did you finish wrapping all the presents? No matter how organized we are or how early we start, we always leave out a few that we may have forgotten.
Or, what do we do when Uncle Harry, who we haven’t seen in years, shows up with a bottle of Christmas Cheer. I bought a few extra 10-, 25-, and 50-dollar gift cards for such emergencies. If by chance we have some left over, Carol and I use them ourselves. No loss. Problem solved.
Anthony Giorgianni of Consumer Reports does not recommend gift cards. He refers to them as cash with a lot of strings attached. Some cards carry hefty fees such as purchase fees and dormancy fees. Other cards may be for your favorite retailer that may be shut down after the holidays for any number of reasons, or your favorite neighborhood restaurant which may go belly up in January. I prefer handing out Visa gift cards. It’s highly unlikely that Visa will disappear in the night.
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Here we go again. Every year at this time we hear from parents, unhappy citizens, and a few school districts that do not want the word Christmas to be used in and around their neighborhood schools. There aren’t too many of them, but they make a lot of noise and accomplish their point by having the wording on the school calendar changed. Then there are a few that do not want to hear Christmas songs when attending their child’s glee club concert in December. If the music teachers in charge are forced to change the lyrics a bit we might be applauding our children singing the following songs:
1) All I Want for Merry Jolly; Festive Joyous Eve is my Two Front Teeth
2) I’m Dreaming of a White Winter Solstice
3) Oh Giving Tree
4) It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Winter Break
5) We Wish You a Merry Cold Weather Holiday
6) I’ll Be Home For Midwinter Holiday Happy Giving Time
7) Rocking Around the Winter Celebration Tree
8) On the First Day of Joyous Time My True Love Gave To Me
9) It’s a Holly Jolly Euro Centrically Imposed Midwinter Festival
10) The Saturnalia Song by the Chipmunks
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Just about any time this week we will find someone’s version of “A Christmas Carol” being telecast on one of the several hundred cable stations. Charles Dickens’ famous story was published in 1843 and was an instant sellout. Almost 25 years later ,our famous author was invited to read his manuscript at an open house in Chicago. Scale manufacturer Thadeus Fairbanks was in the audience that day, and was so moved that he decided to “break the custom we have hitherto of opening the works on Christmas Day.”
Not only did he set a precedent of giving all of his employees a day off on the holiday, he bought Christmas turkeys for every one of them.
As a neighborhood retailer, I quickly learned that the Christmas holiday was one of the most lucrative days of the year. I gave my employees their choice. 1) Take the day off with pay. 2) Work on that day and get paid double. 3) Work on that day and take any two non-holidays off with pay. Okay, my friends. What would you have chosen?
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I am StanGershbein@Bellsouth.net wishing you, your family, and all of our men and women in our armed forces, a very happy holiday, no matter which holiday you celebrate.
