It’s the time of year where everyone is going insane with holiday schtuff. Perhaps it’s time to take a pause, on the shortest day of the year, and remember the true Spirit of the Season. This story is unlikely to be that moment.
Today’s Word:
crispation
As in:
The U.S. actions in Iraq have prompted increased security to help curtail any terrorist activity that might be planned. Government officials are being cautious that terrorists groups will try to capitalize on the confusion of the holiday season.
But few suspected that the violence would erupt from the fringe group known as Citizens for the Preservation of the Holiday Spirit, a group which is obsessed with promoting the year-round celebration of all holidays. The group polices “un-Holiday-like” behavior and forces the offending persons to watch holiday films, consuming holiday foods and forced holiday activities such as caroling, cooking, sledding and visiting relatives until their behavior is properly adjusted. Their techniques of “torture” include the continuous playing of seasonal music and the proliferation of exorbitantly “cute” decorations.
Recently, the group was denounced for focusing merely on the Christian holiday celebrations, which led the leadership to add “attitude adjustment protocols” for those with different, but “no less valid” traditions. Differing holiday traditions, according to the group, are “certainly no less a manifestation of goodwill and the holiday spirit of kindness.”
However, the group is so “manifestly opposed to a world without cheer” that they have acted in violence, to make clear that they will not tolerate U.S. aggression or the proliferation of “Scrooges and Grinches everywhere” Today, members of the group, armed with tinsel and colorful marshmallows, pelted the trees surrounding the Pentagon. Other group members, armed with similar weapons of mass happiness, began to decorate strangers as they waited in long shopping lines and shoot air canisters filled with tinsel into the trees an onto playgrounds and around malls. Each “armed” group had portable stereos playing Christmas music, and some carried dangerous glass ornaments.
The reaction of observers, whose faces were “decorated” in decidedly non-Holiday crispations, were, frankly, unpleasant, and to the minds of the Citizens for Preservation of the Holiday Spirit, quite uncharitable. “What the heck do they think they’re doing?!” exclaimed one observer. “Freaks! Weirdos!”
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crispation: / kris-PAY-shun / 1. A curling or being curled, 2. a slight, involuntary contraction of the muscles or skin.