It gives me a headache. Last night when I stopped to buy a six pack of beer and a television dinner there were two Santa's ringing bells at either end of the entry to the grocery store. The one on the southern approach was doing much better. People were dropping clinking piles of change in his little red bucket, 35, 40, 50 cents at a time. Give until it hurts and they have a low threshold for pain.
Northern Santa was not happy, he had three pull tabs from empty cans and 17 cents, so he moved closer. And then a little closer, and then he was standing in the entryway. People were overcome with the spirit of the season, seeing this man in a fake white beard, and a shiny red plastic suit, sweating in the unseasonable warmth, blocking the path into the grocery store. So they turned around and went back to their cars where the guilt and shame was a little more remote and off camera.
Of course the store management was not happy, and asked the offending Santa to move out of the entryway. He did, he moved just south of the southern Santa, where he started raking in the dough, after several minutes he had accumulated almost 90 cents from the dozens of people walking into the store to spend thousands of dollars.
Charity is a zero sum game and this windfall for the new southernmost Santa, formerly the northernmost Santa, (hereafter referred to as Santa A) was an automatic loss for the former southernmost Santa, (henceforth known as Santa B). Santa B (for the sake of brevity let's call him B) moved just a few feet south of Santa A (going forward he will just be A). A was furious.
A moved past B. B began swearing and threatened A with grievous bodily harm.
"Give it your best shot, fat boy." A said, puffing out his chest with the arrogance only a fake beard and a shiny red plastic suit will provide.
They began wrestling rolling on the ground, grunting with exertion, knocking over a display marked "peace on earth" and filled with artificial evergreen wreaths. They wallowed through the fake needles, the sprayed on fragrance covering both of them in a gentle pine scent.
A crowd gathered and bets were placed. A bright young man, who was studying applied business techniques, ran inside and bought candy bars and cold soda and began selling concessions. People were buying the patio furniture that had been marked down to clearance prices early in the fall and lit fires, roasting hot-dogs and marshmallows.
The air was filled with a joy and festivity that was seen nowhere else in the city, nowhere else in the whole country. A and B eventually ran out of air and just stopped, breathing in ragged shallow breaths, laying on the ground, unable to move, they were locked in a warm, almost tender embrace, sweat dripping from the synthetic beards.
The store made a fortune selling everything from fire pits to canned cheese and boxed crackers, the crowd went away happy, the Santa's made a good haul, and the Christmas spirit that was on display was put back in the bottle. People snarled at each other and cursed their fellow man with all the venom of the season, and Christmas was back to normal.
"And I heard him exclaim as he flew out of sight..." Well you know the rest.
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