"The Christmas Shoes" Redux

Just in case there was any doubt whatsoever that I am a complete and total sentimental fool, I have decided to reprise a post that I originally wrote last year on December 2nd. Part of the reason for this is that I have many, many, many people who come to my blog via a search for "Christmas Shoes" or "Sir, I Wanna Buy These Shoes". Even though this is one of the sappiest songs out there, people like it and look for it. I thought I'd do them all a favor and post a slightly better video that I found on YouTube rather than the one I used last year.

While looking for another version of the song to post, I listened to the song several times over and - jeer away - I found myself getting all choked up with a tear or two running down my cheek. Now I could have posted this without mentioning that particularly vulnerable fact but I wanted to point out that even though I may come across as the proverbial "Christmas Crab" from time to time, I'm not really. Tough shell - soft innards.

"Back in early November, I had decided that I was pretty much going to write off the entire Christmas holiday this year due to my pure disgust with the retail industry and their overwhelming greed. I've become accustomed to the Christmas season beginning the day after Thanksgiving but these days Thanksgiving seems to get steamrolled over completely by the likes of Wal-Mart and Target who just can't wait to start counting their profits. Before Halloween even had a chance to be nothing more than a pile of empty candy wrappers and rotting jack-o-lanterns, retailers had aisle upon aisle of Christmas merchandise on display and were already lamenting a possible "slow" season.

Now don't get me wrong, I am by no means the most religious person in the world and am not even so sure about the historical accuracy of Christ's birth and December (apparently there were no good Pagan holidays to steal from in July) but when did Christmas become so focused on the gifts? Apparently if you don't have the Mother Lode of presents flowing out from underneath your tree, you aren't really celebrating Christmas.

I decided that this year I wanted no part of what passes for Christmas anymore, that I was going to become a "Grooge" - a combination of the Grinch and Scrooge. There are plenty of people out there who call themselves "Scrinches" but I didn't even want to be a part of their group, I wanted to be my own group - alone in my disgust. But I've discovered that it's not easy for someone who has loved Christmas their whole life to suddenly do a complete turn-around and recite such things as "Bah humbug!" and it's "A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" followed by the humming of the Grinch's theme song.

Despite my best intentions to ignore the holiday completely I've found that I can't do it and have caught myself singing Christmas tunes while hanging the Christmas lights that I swore I was not going to put up this year. I knew my fate was sealed when I was driving across town to run some errands with my car radio station turned to WBMW-106.5 (which is playing Christmas songs 24/7) and "The Christmas Shoes" came on. One minute I'm happily munching on a brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart while running through the day's errands in my head and the next minute I'm all choked up and fighting back tears.

Even though the song is about buying something, it exemplifies what Christmas is really supposed to be all about. It's schmaltzy, it's sad, it's got kids singing the chorus in places for crying out loud but it's Christmas in a nutshell and who can't love that? Haven't heard it? Well, you're in luck as I found a version of this on YouTube. The imagery is pretty lame so just close your eyes and listen to the song - let's see if you don't choke up, too!"

When I posted this last December the comments were none too heart-warming, with the exception of one, so let's see if we can do a little better this time around, shall we?