A helpful hint for all you critically self-involved and color blind people out there.  It’s Christmas time.

If you haven’t noticed the huge Santa’s and extravagant retail displays or seen and heard those people ringing their bells as you entered your favorite shopping place, you must have noticed the predominance of the traditional Christmas decorator colors, red and green.  Naturally, it’s easy to become confused.  Each holiday has its own colors:  Independence Day is red, white and blue; Halloween is orange and black, St. Patrick’s Day is green and Easter is shaded in those pastel hues which are uncertain as to whether they want to be actual colors or not.

Years ago, before someone started to color code holidays, they could sneak up on you.  Decorations would come out of the boxes two or three weeks before Christmas and if you were really preoccupied with something like health concerns, a large business deal or a major political coup you could go to work one morning and find the office conspicuously deserted.  Today, however, the festive Christmas hangings go up before the Halloween promotions fall.  They all but skip Thanksgiving, which gets maybe one aisle for a couple of weeks.  There’s obviously no money in Thanksgiving – probably because of those earth tone reds, oranges and yellows…how festive is that?

There’s also a certain electricity in the air at Christmas time.  An excitement that permeates the air.  A joyous amicability toward all people, especially those from whom you may get a gift.  There’s an understanding of others and a love for all people who…  Okay, so maybe it’s the electrical fields generated by all those sickeningly happy colored little lights combined with a palpable increase in the tension of people all over the community who are worried about spending the exact same amount on each of the kids, whether or not to buy a gift for the janitor who cleans the teachers’ lounge which is used by the math instructor of your 8^th grader or if the amount of your life insurance policy covers your accumulated Christmas debt.

Whatever the method, these are all wonderful ways to tell that Christmas is near, so get in the mood.  HO! HO! HO!  Merry Christmas!  Seasons Greetings!

What?  Not that easy for you?  Maybe you could try something else the business community uses to artificially stimulate your shopping glands…  Like music.  Music is a terrific mood setter.  Perhaps you could listen to some Christmas songs.  How about some timeless Christmas classics like “Christie, the Christmas Mouse” or “It’s Christmas and I Wonder Where I Am” or perhaps the mournful, yet rockin’ “ I Won’t Be Twisting This Christmas.”  You should be able to find these and others scattered about irregularly in stores and broadcasts a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  After Thanksgiving you will likely be hard-pressed to find anything else to the point of finally searching the AM radio dial the final week before Christmas in an effort to find Casey Kasem’s irritating sing-song twang in a forty year old rerun simply to listen to some notes strung together without the use of bells…  Only to find Casey’s annual countdown of the top 100 Christmas songs of all time. (Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas” is #1, so you don’t have to force yourself to listen for curiosities sake.)

If none of these methods work, it’s possible you could take a minute to look at the reason for the holiday of Christmas – the true meaning behind the season.  No, it wasn’t developed by the CCC (Coalition of Card Companies) or the Brazen Alliance for Happy Hedonism Under Major Businesses United Globally (BAHHUMBUG).  Also, while some guy of Popish occupation (that was Pope Gregory, the calendar guy, but you won’t remember anyway so I won’t bore you with that info) decided the given holiday should be celebrated on the 25^th of December, he didn’t originate the true meaning of Christmas, either.

The true meaning of Christmas is found in the 2000 year old teachings of a carpenter from the province of Galilee in early Israel.  NO! It has nothing to do with the proper way of forming a dove-tail joint…you’re not really from this planet, are you?  This time of year was set aside as the time to rejoice the birth of Christ, the focus of the most influential religion the world has yet known.  The idea is to celebrate the occurrence…  Not only what it means to those who hold this faith as their own but, just as importantly, what the lessons and basic tenets of its teachings are to all people, regardless of their particular beliefs.

This, of course, is a noble and benevolent conviction based on love and charity toward everyone, not just toward the chairmen and boards of directors of the major retailers in the world.  And neither is it based on love and charity for everyone within your gift hierarchy, which is the relativity of the individual person to your personal, um, personage.  What I do mean by this is E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E, not just those you know and like or wish to suck up to.  For example, it is not within the “true meaning of Christmas” to scream angrily and with great loudness at the 3^rd shift sub-assistant manager Super Toy Wholesale Outlet because she hasn’t had the new Ionizing Nuclear Slimy Alien Appendage Melter with true action light and sound effects, not including batteries in the store since 11:45 AM the day after Thanksgiving.  She doesn’t work in the factory making the things, she has nothing to do with the distribution or the shipping company and she didn’t sell the last one for sole purpose of keeping your already over-stimulated child from getting one for Christmas (although she probably will next year).  As a matter of fact, if she holds the true meaning of Christmas she will likely understand and forgive you for your red-faced, sociopathic outburst…  But probably not.

So stop what you’re doing – just for a few minutes – and look around you.  Put on a festive tie or pin a Christmas bell on your sweater.  Heck, you can put on a red suit and laugh a lot if it helps, but I wouldn’t get TOO carried away with the surface stuff.  Be kind to your kids and your parents and your neighbors and your co-workers.  That’s easy.  You should nice to them, anyway.  The object is to be nice to people you don’t know.  Try it!  That should put you in the TRUE Christmas spirit.

And while you’re at it, put up some of those decorator Christmas colors in your window – maybe your critically self-involved neighbor will see them and smile.

Merry Christmas.