Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 27, 1995                   TAG: 9511280036
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

YEAH, I'M A REGULAR JOLLY OLD ELF

I've got my Christmas game face on and I'm ready to play. Get out those credit cards. Seize the day. Deck the halls. Ho. Ho. Ho. That sort of thing.

I will not this year, or ever again, sneer at those people in the "Nutcracker" as sissies who ought to get real jobs. I won't complain, no matter how may times they rerun "It's A Wonderful Life."

I have to be honest about this, however, and admit that my high spirits didn't drive me crazy enough to join those hordes of truly desperate people who start their Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving.

I mean no slight to the season when I say these people are driven by some primal force I don't understand.

I once innocently went to K-Mart on a Friday after Thanksgiving to buy a pint of wood stain. I was trapped in there for two hours. Stephen King would have loved it.

This may not sound very merry, but I don't want to do my shopping in an atmosphere that resembles a major German retreat on the Eastern Front.

Why leave the comfort of your kitchen when you can order all this real good stuff with 800 numbers? That's what I always say.

I remember softer times in the Christmas business.

I remember when sales women who looked to be the same size as your wife would try on a dress for you - out of your presence, of course.

The dress never fit and the neckline was always too daring, but everybody knows they're about to isolate a gene that makes women enjoy exchanging things after Christmas. It's in there with the one that makes them unable to meet a Christmas tree that isn't leaning.

But let's put these memories aside and concentrate on having a family Christmas that would make the Waltons look like serial killers; or Bob Cratchit seem to be a no-good drunk who ran around on his wife while she was home making the modest plum pudding and stuffing a puny goose.

No more of that humbug stuff for me, pal. I'm going to be so merry they may have to call the law.

I'm going to be adorable. Sweet. Concerned. Giving. Caring. I'm running out of space here, but I have to add nice, fair, forgiving, generous, compassionate and just naturally wonderful.

In return, it seems to me the least they can do is take it easy on those reruns of "It's A Wonderful Life."