There is just no getting around it. The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. It is also the craziest. This is the day of the year when you will not find a parking space at any store, no matter how big or small, to save your life. Try as you might, you will still be orbiting the mall parking lot sometime next spring. When you do find a place to park the car about sixteen blocks away from your objective, you will have to walk through slush and black ice all the way to your destination, which for this purpose we will name, “Killer Shoes R Us.” This store, once you arrive at it’s front door, will be mysteriously closed…a fatal condition which you will discover to be rapidly spreading as you make your way through the mall. The stores that are closed will be the same ones that are offering tremendous one day only half off sales. The reasons for the closings will be evasive at best. The most creative will be, “gone Christmas shopping, back later.”

Worse yet, the little rug-rats are out in force at this very moment, with only one thought on their underdeveloped little brains….how to create new ways to torture adults. The little urchin on shoe/skates who side-swipes you and knocks you into the canned tuna display, which you will have to help re-assemble later under the glaring supervision of the store manager, will look down at you with an effervescent grin as you pick yourself up out of the rubble. His mother will come running to his rescue and give you a dirty look designed to reduce you to the worm that you are. You will consider hurling a dented can of tuna at her but will think better of it once you come to appreciate the fact that you are already the focal point of the entire store. Every shopper within miles has heard that crash of tuna cans, and your expletives that followed it.

Hopefully the sound of Christmas music piped endlessly through tinny loudspeakers is the thrill of your lifetime, musically speaking, because if not, you will soon be sorely out of sorts. The music does not quit, ever. It begins on the day after Thanksgiving and will continue non-stop until you know longer care if Rudolph’s nose is red. You are definitely not a happy elf. However, what will bother you the most during the Christmas season, as far as music is concerned, is the sound of bells clattering for your attention outside each and every store you stop at. The Salvation Army will be out in force, with their red kettles, and bored, shivering people in snowsuits, ear muffs and mittens, who will stare uncompromisingly at you with each step you take, a move conjured for the sole purpose of making you feel guilty enough to empty your wallet right there on the spot.

While you are still in the parking lot you will find yourself walking very carefully over suddenly alien turf, slippery snow that just barely covers a glaze of solid ice that you are quite sure one of the mall employees created the evening before with a garden hose and a few too many beers down his gullet. Once you enter an actual store you will find sixteen signs posted in at least two languages, all telling you to be cautious as the floor is slippery when wet. There are no such warnings posted in the parking lot however. You are particularly careful outside the store because you are conditioned to be that way, but once inside the store you throw caution to the wind, and hurriedly stomp your way down the aisle, only to find yourself lying flat on your back, star gazing, in the cereal aisle. When you hear a bored voice over the intercom telling the world there is a spill in Aisle one, and you are pretty much convinced that you are the spill in question…you will no longer have any urge to buy the ingredients for those Christmas cookies you had in mind.

Don’t be surprised if you spot a Santa Claus or two while you are visiting the mall. This will not shock you considering the time of the year…but what will shock you is the language that will proceed from the jolly old elf’s mouth when he attempts to park his sleigh, ( a 1989 Dodge Omni beater) in the overcrowded mall parking lot. Your children’s eyes will be as big as cookies as they endeavor to make heads or tails out of the string of profanities that emanate from the fat guy in red. This situation will be exacerbated by watching Santa take his first step from his 1989 model “sleigh” after he finally scrapes it into a parking spot between two huge vans that is really not even big enough to park a motorcycle, and end up on his back in the slush. Now is the time to hustle your innocent brood into the nearest shopping mall entrance. You can worry about what they think of the Victoria’s Secret lingerie after you get inside.

Plowing your way through the holiday crowd inside the mall is an unforgettable experience. No matter how hard you try and how much therapy you pay for, you will never forget it, so you may as well embrace the knowledge that your shopping trip is going to involve rubbing shoulders with the Jones’s…..the Smith’s, the Andersons and everybody else on the planet as well. Moreover, you will not be a discreet, gentle shopper, as you will soon find yourself lambasting elderly ladies for the very last turkey or ham in the store. You will not be ashamed of this , unless you notice that she is traveling with four strapping young grandsons, all of whom wear a look of murder in their eyes because they didn’t want to go shopping with Granny anyway, and now you have smashed the bag of cookies she had purchased to placate them. You will feel about two centimeters tall about that time, as you gingerly help the old lady to her feet. As she pounds you with the brick she keeps in her handbag, and the grandsons are waiting in line behind her for their turn, you suddenly decide that perhaps Christmas shopping is a bit overrated.

I am not even going to mention the problems involved with decking the halls each year at Christmas time. There are too many to count, and it would take up too much of your valuable reading time. I hope you all enjoyed this little bit of humor and have a wonderfully merry Christmas. God bless you and yours at the holidays and throughout the year as well.