Cycling in the South Bay

Christmas means … new bike.

Christmas means … new wheels.

Christmas means … new carbon, all 100%, made of pure carbon.

Have you noticed that no one is reminding you how many shopping days are left until Christmas, though? Have you noticed that there’s hardly any Christmas music playing at the mall? That the eight reindeer of the Apocalypse and the jolly old elf are nowhere to be seen?

No tears here, that’s for sure. I’ve been a Grinch for years and would like nothing better than to go through November and December without being punished by Christmas sales and holly and jingle bells and Christmas culture. I haven’t entrusted my happiness to a non-existent, mythical elf for decades.

However, if you think that the extinction of Santa means that you won’t be mercilessly hassled to go buy even more 100% carbon, you’re wrong. And if you think that the sudden disappearance of the Santa pagan and his musical trappings is a result of some greater corporate sensitivity to the fact that we live in a diverse and multicultural and poly-religious society, well, you’d be wrong again.

You see, marketers woke up one day and realized that the worst thing they could possibly do was put a time limit on shopping, because although it stimulated a mad rush up to December 25, thereafter things got deader than a Fleetwood Mac concert after 8:00 PM. Wouldn’t it be better if the sheep could be trained to not simply spend more, but to spend longer?

Yes, it would!!

So they put some arsenic in the reindeer feed, took the old redcoated fellow out behind the sleigh shed and smothered him with a pillow, and got down to the real business of Christmas, which has always been business. Using Black Friday as the new secular holiday marker, following it with Black Friday Weekend and then by Cyber Monday, and then keeping the phrase “40% OFF!” going full bore (selected items only a/k/a Shit You Don’t Want), American retail has finally found the solution to the Christmas Conundrum of “How do we initiate a shopping orgy that starts way back at the end of October and doesn’t finish until February?”

The only bit of Christmas music I heard at the mall the other day was “All I Want for Christmas is You,” which I think was written and sung by Mozart.

Santa is dead. Long live Santa.

END

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Tagged: christmas music, christmas shopping, cycling in la, cycling in los angeles, cycling in the south bay, gifts for cyclists

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