TIS' THE SEASON TO BE SELLING

It’s the Christmas season and if you’re truly into the spirit of the holiday season – you have visions of sugarplum fairies dancing in your head or you’re imaging the smiles on the faces of young children as they open their gifts from Santa on Christmas morning. The Christmas season means all of that to me – along with stealing a kiss under the mistletoe, watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” for the thousandth time, and humming some non-traditional music that you only hear at this time of the year.

You see – everyone associates songs like “Silent Night”, “Little Drummer Boy” and “Jingle Bells” with the holiday season – not me. Christmas isn’t Christmas until I hear “cha-cha-chia” drilled into my head along with moving images of some green weed growing out of a porcelain donkey – now that’s Christmas. And leave it to those Madison Avenue ad boys to actually convince us that someone we know and love would actually be thrilled to receive a Chia Pet as a gift during the holiday season.

It’s the holiday season and you can forget seeing the commercials for the glass globes that make it easy to water your plants or the CD that will help you to use a computer to buy worthless shit on E-Bay – the tv commercial landscape has changed. Now, it’s commercials for the Chia Pet and “clap on/clap off - The Clapper”. Over the next few weeks these commercials are going to seem like they’re on the air every hour of every day on any station that you turn to. CNN. They’ll air there. USA – you betcha - they need something to fill the commercial spots on “Law and Order”. Weather Channel – they’ll probably be sponsoring weather on the 8's. And, I wouldn’t be surprised if they even showed on some PBS station as a program underwriter. Why not – it’s the Christmas season – the most wonderful time of the year.

And to me - the Christmas season wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t see that cartoon of a Santa sliding down a hill on a Norelco electric shaver. Every year that I see that commercial I don’t want to rush into the bathroom and shave my beard with an electric shaver – hell no – I want to find an electric shaver big enough for me to hop on and slide down some snowy hill somewhere. Now that’s Christmas.

As I watch television these days - you can’t help not getting into that Christmas spirit...with the exception of Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Burl Ives – what’s more Christmas than a Chia Pet, The Clapper and a Norelco electric razor. Nothing. So, leave a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Santa....he’s coming with his bag filled with all of the above to make your Christmas merry.