Posted on December 4, 2011
Despite my extremely jaded outlook, every year brings a new Christmas horror that manages to shock me.
This year's is “Santa Clausets.”
While driving down a side road, I passed a self storage unit and my usual thought flashed across my forebrain: that most people can only stand their lives by putting their selves in cold storage.
This place had a twist, though: a marquee sign that read, “Santa Clausets now available!”
Okay, the clever pun made me laugh, and then, as I worked it through, the frisson of horror was such that I had to slow down and concentrate on the road for a moment. These “clausets” are for people who have bought so much Christmas crap so far in advance that they can't store it at home. Never mind the collateral absurdities about having to hide all this crap so that Junior doesn't creep into MommyDaddy's closet and find it in advance. The reason for renting a crap room is to hold crap that they don't have room for... but will have to have crammed in after the glorious holiday anyway.
Far from a clever pun and a mild moment of good-cheer humor, so rare for Renegades these days, things like “Santa Clausets” are another symptom of the deep sickness that consumer mania has brought to the peak fever of Christmas.
Christmas and Halloween have more in common each year — H'ween gets more crap and Xmas gets scarier.
—JKG
“Santa Clausets”
Despite my extremely jaded outlook, every year brings a new Christmas horror that manages to shock me.
This year's is “Santa Clausets.”
While driving down a side road, I passed a self storage unit and my usual thought flashed across my forebrain: that most people can only stand their lives by putting their selves in cold storage.
This place had a twist, though: a marquee sign that read, “Santa Clausets now available!”
Okay, the clever pun made me laugh, and then, as I worked it through, the frisson of horror was such that I had to slow down and concentrate on the road for a moment. These “clausets” are for people who have bought so much Christmas crap so far in advance that they can't store it at home. Never mind the collateral absurdities about having to hide all this crap so that Junior doesn't creep into MommyDaddy's closet and find it in advance. The reason for renting a crap room is to hold crap that they don't have room for... but will have to have crammed in after the glorious holiday anyway.
Far from a clever pun and a mild moment of good-cheer humor, so rare for Renegades these days, things like “Santa Clausets” are another symptom of the deep sickness that consumer mania has brought to the peak fever of Christmas.
Christmas and Halloween have more in common each year — H'ween gets more crap and Xmas gets scarier.
—JKG