Letter: ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ Already? How-How-How Can This Be?

By David Anderson

Too early to be jolly?

Already – and Thanksgiving is still a week away, some would say ‘in the way’ – the sounds of ‘ho-ho-ho’ are making you wonder ‘how-how-how’ can this be?

For example, on the 19^th of November (the 37^th day of Christmas) what do you call the lowest gas prices in three years as reported by “The Fiscal Times?” Right:  “Christmas Comes Early.”

Then there’s the couple who spent their Christmas cheer already this past Sunday having purchased tickets to cheer on their beloved Broncos, now 9-1, in one of the biggest games of the (insert: ‘holiday’) season.

“They even named their newborn son Broden after the Denver Broncos.”

Blitzen, I think, would have been more seasonal.  No, thanks for asking but Blitzen is not a linebacker.  Blitzen is a reindeer.

Speaking of which, early this very frostbit morning I’m shivering outside the band room waiting for it to open at our local middle school and a kid comes up to me, both of us total strangers, and he says, first words out of his mouth, “You look like Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer!”

Not the exchange of the usual pleasantries in which we formally introduce ourselves, but something more along the line of ‘your nose is so red you could pass for that guy with the beaming honker that saved Christmas.’

‘Yah.  It’s cold,’ I said, smiling sweetly, thinking to myself ‘and you are one of the Griswold children’?

Speaking of reindeer, two of our three daughters were born during the holidays, one during hunting season which our son-in-law argued (not sure effectively) with his wife, our daughter, was why he was always in the woods pursuing the pullers of Santa’s sleigh and not rather home celebrating his wife’s birthday: “it’s your parent’s fault.”

The other of the three girls was born, speaking of poor timing, on the day after “The Night Before Christmas.”

Home, scratch that, hospital for the holidays.

Yep.  Christmas Day.

We lived then in what amounted to a small village with a small hospital just over the river and through the woods.  There was one other baby born that Christmas morning, a boy, whose parents, with options like Comet and Cupid, chose instead Christopher.

Not to be outdone, ours became Christina.  Middle name: Noel.

And the guy’s last name she would one day marry with whom to live happily ever after?

Klas.