Jingle all the way

The quest for a happy holiday

— Numerous studies have shown that during the Holiday Season, a season that in more reasonable times was known as the Christmas Season, there is an inexplicable rise in depression. In fact, high-dollar, overpaid, overeducated psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists have a high-falutin’ name for it that even us low-falutin’ folks can understand-depression.

I am usually a very upbeat person. Give me four fresh-brewed 12-cup pots of coffee and five or six Twinkies (in a pinch-Ding Dongs), and I’m as perky as a prom queen in a poodle skirt pickled with Prozac.

I can find something positive in just about anything. If I get distracted by a cliffhanger episode of Mayberry RFD and accidentally burn our supper before Joanne gets home from work at the auto-parts store, I tell her that we’re having a new Cajun recipe, blackened pancakes. But we usuallyhave a couple of beers before supper, so she never really notices.

If I hit some soccer mom’s way-too-big-SUV when I’m parallel parking, I always leave a happy note jammed under her windshield wipers saying “Have a nice day,” and I stick five or six happy faces on it. When she sees that, I’msure she doesn’t even care about her crushed front bumper (I park really fast). Providing, of course, that she can see through her cracked windshield.

Before I gathered my Google research for this, I didn’t realize that SAD was an acronym. In spite of my glut of gaiety, even I find myself suffering occasionally from SAD. I just always told the guys down at Kelly’s Bar and Billiards that I had “the sad.” Like my uncle who constantly complained when he had “the gout.” It turns out that a bunch of high-dollar, overpaid, overeducated psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists picked it up and named it “seasonal affective disorder.” And like a lot of low-falutin’ folks like me, it always seems to hit during the Holiday Season (aka: Christmas Season).

So this year, I tried some homeopathic cures that several friends suggested: Barney thought that I should record several hours of Congress on C-SPAN and that once I saw what a dysfunctional, depressed den of dunderheads they were, I would see how normal and happy I really am. Joanne suggested pouring a little Jack Daniels in my three or four pots of Mr. Coffee. My neighbor Julius said I should start jogging and get some endorphins swirling around inside my head. And Leo, bless his heart, extolled the meditative contortions he’s learning at his yoga class and invited me to join him just as soon as his fractured ankles heal and he recovers from knee surgery.

None of that worked.

Then, last month, I was reading the help-wanted ads one morning. (Joanne always makes me read them, and just to make sure I did, quizzes me at the supper table every night. I have beenGuest writerlaid-off for several years, and she keeps hoping that something will catch my interest.) There, right below the ad for door-to-door frozen-meat-product salespeople, I saw it. Some store in the mall wanted someone to dress up like Santa for the Holiday Season (aka: Christmas Season).

I jumped into the ’86 Corolla (literally; ever since some lady with a waytoo-big SUV deliberately ran into the side of it, none of the doors will open, and I have to jump in through the sun roof) and popped in my favorite Christmas cassette just to get myself in a Santa Clausie mood. I arrived early, so I parked behind the mall and did a little Dumpster diving before I went in. After an exhausting three-minute interview, the store owner hired me on the spot. I think it was the gut.

The guy’s wife handed me a plastic bag with a crumpled Santy suitstuffed inside that smelled like the men’s room at Kelly’s. After Joanne let out the pants and jacket, I suited up and reported for my first night’s duty. By 7 p.m., wild-eyed, overcaffeinated helicopter mommies and daddies were lined up halfway down the mall mezzanine with their little ones who were beingvery disruptive. Darting about, making a lot of noise, and bothering the Holiday Shoppers (aka: Christmas Shoppers) as they rifled through the racks in Victoria’s Secret for that perfect little something for their Uncle Ed who moved to San Francisco.

As they fought their way to the front of the line with their 16-megapixel cameras focused, zoomed and red-eye-corrected, they unleashed their little monsters on me. Shutter fingers were poised and ready to snap two or three hundred frames that would be cropped and digitally enhanced for their Facebook page. All three hundred.

Their little ones scampered up to my scantily clad helper-elfettes (earning a few extra holiday bucks when they weren’t scheduled at Hooters) who winked at me and tossed them in my lap. Overcome with wild enthusiasm, they forgot what they were there for and started whining at their helicoptering mommies and daddies who were furiously railing away on their iPhones texting, talking and taking pictures. Before my scantily-clad elfettes could pull them off, I felt awarm sensation soak through my red velvet pants and drip into my fake black plastic boots.

After my last night on the job, as the pet-store owners paid me and rolled up the banner-Get your picture taken with Sandy Claws-I told them that next year I might try kids.

Or then again, maybe not.

Bill Rausch is a freelance writer from Little Rock. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial, Pages 11 on 12/24/2012

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