I don’t watch much tv (other than the Andy Griffith show — Aunt Bea had a boyfriend with bad intentions and Andy managed to encourage the boyfriend to leave without incident… my hero!). But a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving came on and I just had to watch that.

[When Lucy was encouraging Charlie Brown to kick the football and he was falling for it, I started shouting, “Don’t do it Charlie Brown, she’s going to pull the football away at the last minute!” My wife, who has never seen a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving — she’s from Brazil — asked me why I thought Lucy was going to move the ball and was surprised when Lucy did it. “How’d you know?” 🙂 ]

I got the distinct impression that this holiday season has an air of high anxiety about it. The intensity and quantiy of ads that came on over the hour I was in front of the telly gave me a sense that all stops are being pulled out to get people into the stores as early as 4:00 a.m. to spend, spend, spend. If that doesn’t occur, the darkness comes rushing in and civilization as we know it ends on December 26.

Strange, isn’t it? What is supposed to be a time of joy is being orchestrated as a time of desperation.