Dispatches from the trenches

Of the war on Christmas.

I’ve been here for a few months now, embedded with the six hundred and fifty-twelfth battalion.

I have to tell our readers back home that it was as if people here didn’t even celebrate Christmas. As if it were a romantic holiday, with quests for “Christmas dates” and the like.

On Christmas Eve, I went on a sortie to a bar not far from here. The bar was packed. Not a person was stirring from tables that had been acquired. Frustrated with the table situation, several members of our brigade went on a small search and reconnaissance mission and reported the same situation in several other bars. A shocking situation, friends, a shocking situation.

On Christmas day, we awoke early, but, alas, no snow. Really, yet another example of how not even the weather here can conform to our narrow expectations of a Courrier and Ives Christmas. Lacking snow, we did not go dashing over fields in our one-horse open sleigh. No bells on bobtails rang.

Rather, we took the hummer out to patrol the shopping center in search of some Christmas spirit. We did manage to find a Tully’s that served Tiramisu lattes (and, friends, if you can get these at home – run [don’t walk!] to the nearest Tully’s). Let me tell you something: it didn’t even look like a single one of the five employees behind the counter were getting paid time-and-a-half. Not. A. Single. One!

Moreover, throughout the shopping center, not a single store was closed. It was as if these people were celebrating Christmas the same way we celebrate every holiday in the States: by shopping. Folks, people really are the same the world over.

We went out for a lunch of Italian food (Italian = Pope, ya’ know). Not a single server wished us a “Merry Christmas” or even a “Happy Holidays.” We were, however, told that we had “chosen wisely” when we ordered our food. Indeed, indeed.

For dinner, it was sushi. Again, not a single “Merry Christmas.” Many couples were out, enjoying the date night, ladies dressed to nines. We saw not a single present exchanged over dinner. We didn’t even hear any wishes expressed for one’s two front teeth or even a Red Ranger model air rifle.

Merry Christmas!