To the Editor:
About 70+ years ago, I was a big fan of Christmas. School was out and we took our sleds to the park, ice skated on a frozen pond, and thumbed through the new Sears Winter Catalog on the dining room table. It was my link to the outside world and it offered me everything I ever wanted in life. But my, oh my, how times have changed.
Sears has since gone the way of the now-extinct local newspaper ads, the downtown department stores, and the dodo bird. However, today’s Santa is the reincarnation of Sears disguised in the form of Amazon.com which serves to fulfill our wants and needs just like that of its ancestral retail giant, but without the burden of a physical presence. I have fond memories of Christmas the old way, and I don’t think it’s all due to dementia or a sentimental longing for the so-called good old days. Most things are better today than 70 years ago, but some are not. The loss of our Christmas traditions greatly affects who we’ve become, be it for better or worse. I can’t help but believe we have lost something of value, and I’m pretty sure the dodo bird will return long before we ever recapture the things we once held dear. I suspect life has always been this way. Perhaps that’s a good thing, but I seriously doubt it.
So, if you see some poor old geezer with four fingers staring blankly out a window longing for Xmas past, that’s me, begging to be rescued from today’s Christmas piffle and the mind-numbing dreck served upby the fine folks at the Hallmark Channel. I’ll be happy when Tuesday arrives and the remnants of another faux-Christmas are neatly piled up next to the curb.
Gary Hetherington
Springfield, Illinois
The 1971 Sears Catalog can be browsed here.
IT IS TIME TO LOOK INWARD TO THE 2A COMMUNITY
If the FFL’s would collectively, in store and online, stop selling law enforcement firearms and accessories that are banned for their own citizens of whom they call “subjects” this attack on our Constitutional rights would stop pretty quickly. You see, when the ones who enforce bogus laws against We The People don’t have to live by those rules themselves they can say they don’t like it all they want however there’s little incentive to make real change. The minute the foot soldiers for the government have to live by the same rules us subjugated peons do then there will be enough interest to stop these abusive and obnoxious gun control laws. Make them shoulder the pain of gun control until it stops!
Great point. They wouldn’t last 5 minutes living under the rules they enforce. They would be calling the governor’s office relentlessly begging the state to lose all of these lawsuits against PICA. It isn’t hard to see how this would go. Just look at police behavior already. They’ll sit behind the bushes watching for speeders and people on their phones when they constantly do the same thing themselves. EVERYONE sees it! I’ve found one of the best ways to get a cop to stop following you on the highway is to go the speed limit or a couple mph below. Cops don’t last two miles before they turn off. They can’t stand it! WE THE PEOPLE have the power in our own hands to stop the abuses against us but it’s going to take a collective bunch to do it. Fight like the left wing does. They get results and not worry about hurting someone’s feelings. They have one goal: TO WIN! And guess what? EVERYONE sees it!
That Sears catalog brings back memories!
I remember sitting on 2 or three Sears catalogs at “gradma’s” * (my mother was raised by elderly cousins because her mother died in childbirth when she was 3yo.) to be “tall enough” to eat at the big table, many years ago. No child booster seats. Christmas included a fire in her fireplace to burn the wrapping paper which made colored flames, and “midnight” church services starting at 11:30pm with children’s Christmas play and caroling for the elderly “shut-ins” around the small-town neighborhoods. May God Bless America, again, por favor.
Methinks the letter writer has forgotten the meaning if CHRISTmas.
Nailed it.