K.A.C. 2011 - T - 38 ...

    

Just a few more days until that most dreaded day of all: the sleep-deprived, greed-crazed bargain shopping nightmare known as 'Black Friday' - the day after Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday shopping season (or as my wife and I life to call it, "Sleeping-In Day")! We made the mistake one year of getting up early to find something for our son and after experiencing the Madness at the Mall swore NEVER AGAIN to go through that! ALL of our Christmas purchases are done through online shopping - I actually start mine in October and am done early every year ... yeah, I'm 'that guy'. 

    

The one and ONLY thing I miss about going to the malls at this time of year is seeing the kids getting (or in many cases, NOT getting) their photos taken with Santa. It's a yearly tradition, and one fraught with peril and heartache (and that's just the parents)! For the young tykes, it's their ultimate nightmare ... after being warned over and over again about being careful around strangers - plop! - they are uncerimoniously dumped on this totally unknown man's lap and pictures are being taken to record the moment! Mom and Dad chortle gleefully at the tyke's distress and the Big Man holding them gives them a candy cane for their screaming and squalling (don't even get me started about not taking candy from a stranger). The only thing worse than that would be being held by a PSYCHOTIC-LOOKING Santa ... on the back of a dead, stuffed donkey ... oh, boy ... I guess even Santa has his limits and couldn't stand that "Dominic the Donkey" song one more time! 

     Which leads us to our annual look at Sketchy Santas, a favorite website of mine collecting the best of the worst Santa photos from around the world! The mall photos are bad enough, but the vintage photos (as seen on the right) are the ones that really make your blood run cold! I know if I had seen this as a kid, it would have cured me PERMANENTLY of ever wanting ANYTHING to do with the Jolly Fat Man! 

     Gird your loins and take a look at page after page of Holiday Horrors here:

http://sketchysantas.failblog.org/

     But let's be fair: the Mall Santas don't exactly have it easy, either. A good friend of mine is a Mall Santa every year and has some amazing stories to tell about his experiences. Until I can get Dave to put his tales down in print, here's the skinny from ANOTHER Mall Santa, Tom Carmody, who tells it like it is, along with the best and worst parts of the job (hint: Troubled Toddler Tummies)! 


http://srhpost.blogspot.com/2010/12/hard-jobs-for-santa-claus-at-shopping.html 

     Just for the record, I always liked going to see Santa ... it was the Easter Bunny who gave me the jim-jams ... but that's a story for another time.


     Check back tomorrow for more!