We Wish You AmeriChristmas

So, the weekly insert for my local grocery store came yesterday. At the top it says in big red cursive letters, "Merry Christmas," and below it, in print less than half that size, "and the happiest of all holidays." Sounds syrupy-sweet enough until you look at the picture with it:

I gather from the lineup of the [un]usual suspects that when they say "and the happiest of all holidays," they don't mean "the merriest Christmas ever." I think the sentiment might better be expressed, "and have a [insert appropriate adjective here] [insert your religious or irreligious celebration here]." 

Examining the picture, it would appear they're trying to give a diplomatic nod to Eid, Kwanzaa, "Christmas" and Chanukkah. Examining the picture closely, it looks more like a Charlie Brown holiday pageant. The girl donning what's supposed to be a hijab looks like she has someone's pillowcase folded over it... and her hair is showing, for goodness' sake, which rather defeats the purpose of having it on at all.  Next we have Kwanzaa Kid, whose overly confident  smile can almost be heard asserting, "Just because Kwanzaa is a secular holiday doesn't mean I have to take a back seat (double-entendre completely intended) to you three!" Mister Chanukkah apparently let someone superimpose the image of a small cereal bowl behind his head for this photo because you wouldn't be able to see a typical American yarmulke on him without turning him from the camera. (Having the fourth kid turned around would have been a fantastic homage to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -- a religion unto itself.) And you might not have noticed it because of the way I've cropped the photo, but his picture gets the award for the Ultimate Marketing Faux Pas: his picture is directly above a much larger picture of the sale-priced ham. Oy gevalt!

I intentionally left the little girl in the Santa hat for last, not because I give any preference to whatever she's supposed to represent. Quite to the contrary, in fact. A closer look -- one I couldn't give you because my cell phone doesn't handle "zoom" all that well -- reveals that she isn't smiling at all. Her impassive eyes rest just above a pair of dimples that look like they might be held in place with toupee tape or even Botox.  Her picture is certainly worth a thousand words, and the first few go something like this: "Who knows why we do this crap every year. All I know is, Mom makes me wear this hat and then I get loads of toys that I'll start systematically ignoring within hours of opening them. Fair enough. Oh, and I keep seeing these weird little statues of guys in dresses and a baby in a barn, what's up with that?"

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you AmeriChristmas, the next step towards completely whoring out the marketable aspects of every major religion in the U.S.

"Bah humbug" never seemed so appropriate...