Mr. Crankypants went to the grocery store yesterday. The piped-in music had a woman’s voice whining about dreaming of a white Christmas. On the drive home, Mr. Crankypants turned on a vapid classical music radio station. They were playing an overly cheerful recording of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland,” as performed by the Pops Orchestra of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Later in the day, Mr. Crankypants walked down the street. Some store window displays featured bizarre-looking fake snow.
Apparently, Christmas consumerism in the San Francisco Bay area must include bizarre fantasies of cold weather, deep snow, sleighing, and other things that are extremely unlikely to happen in this climate. Mr. Crankypants believes that this is the strongest evidence yet that the Christmas consumer season has morphed from a marketing ploy into a full-blown psycho-pathological delusion.
As Ebeneezer Scrooge put it so eloquently: “Bah. Humbug. Christmas humbug psychosis.”
I saw snow in San Francisco once. Must have been 1959 or 60 or so.
It’s here too in the Midwest, and the fantasy here includes lots of hills and dales, mountains and valleys, all covered with snow. Apparently snow-topped corn fields just aren’t enough.
I saw it spit snow in San Francisco in December of 1984.
“bizarre fantasies of cold weather, deep snow, sleighing, and other things that are extremely unlikely to happen in this climate”
and about which we would complain mightily if they did happen.
I just bought holiday cards. Since I think greeting cards should reflect the actual practices of the people you’re sending them to, and buying them in bulk precludes matching them to the variety of my friends’ religions, Christmas and Hanukah wishes were out. The “happy holidays” and “season’s greetings” choices almost all involved snowflakes (pretty) or snowmen (cute), but despite the prettiness/cuteness, they just didn’t seem right being sent from San Francisco to San Antonio. I finally found un-snowy New Year’s cards. Now to get them out by the day after Christmas . . .