'Tis The Season Opener

Those with long memories will remember this from last year. Those with good taste will have long since forgotten it.

Christmas comes but once a year, which is just as well,

although all the retailers would like to have more

so every single week there would be a Black Friday,

with hordes of crazed, lusting shoppers outside the store

at three-ten in the morning, credit card in hand.

Christmas: a great excuse for a shopping orgy.

The proudly religious also up and orgy

over “Season’s Greetings,” a term they don’t take well.

And “Happy Holidays” gives the devil a hand,

they say. “And we’ll not shop here, not even once more

unless the cash registers in your godless store

tell the clerks to say ‘Merry Christmas’ by Friday.”

That way, when the saved go shopping on Black Friday

they can revel religiously in the orgy

and shop with wild, untamed abandon in the store,

certain that big spending makes God love them so well.

With every smile and proper greeting, they spend more,

and piles of cash go into the store owner’s hand.

“Merry Christmas:” a small price for cash in the hand.

No wonder retailers so enjoy Black Friday

and hope consumer greed will lead to more.

Shoppers spend money they don’t have to fund the orgy,

pulling buckets of cash from the credit card well,

forgetting that dunning notices are in store.

A timid person faces danger in the store.

A Type-A shopper might hit him with her purse or hand.

He’ll leave in an ambulance, and she’ll say, “Oh, well.

Wimps should know better than to shop on Black Friday;

you’ve got to be tough to survive this mad orgy.

He’s out of the way now, and I’m going to shop more.”

The retailer is so glad she keeps spending more;

If she’s got money, she’s welcome in his store.

Voyeuristic economists watch the orgy

to see if it’s giving business a fiscal hand,

or if it’s just another nondescript Friday,

when despite the madness, the stores do not fare well.

The annual orgy, set to begin once more.

To get things going well, you must spend big at the store.

Credit cards in hand, go deep into debt on Friday.