Ho, Ho, Ho

 

Here’s a triptych of unrelated seasonal stories...

Back in 1967, Melvin Whipple created a Christmas display using a nativity scene and 235 lights at his place in Killingly, Connecticut. It was to honor his stepson who had died in an accident. Since then Whipple has augmented the display so that last year’s featured 110,000 lights and 300 moving figures and cost $19,000 to put up and juice. But that seems to have been the swan song. Whipple says the lack of Christmas spirit over the years and the expense have caused him to end the tradition. He offered to sell his extravaganza to the town for only $200,000, saying it was probably worth five times that. The town of 16,000, whose motto is "Great Things Happen Here," informed Whipple that they really couldn’t afford it, thank you, even though he and it had drawn more than 1,500,000 visitors over the years, putting Killingly on the map, at least some maps. For the record, apropos of perhaps nothing, Whipple has a gravestone business, which he took over from his father and is the local cemetery superintendent, in addition to being a justice of the peace who has married more than 1500 couples.

Also not in the party-hardy spirit this Christmas, labor unions in the Czech Republic who demanded Monday that the clerical employees they represent be given a respite from the incessant playing of Christmas carols in the stores in which they work, or get paid a bonus for having to endure the same music all day long. They think their members should be given $19 or two days off as compensation for having to listen to the same music over and over, which they claim in such amounts to be unhealthy, for workers and customers alike. A spokesman for one of the chain stores involved said they’d received no complaints and "don't see the music as a problem."

You can’t say those Maine lobstermen -- locally pronounced something like lahb-stah-mihn -- haven’t got a sense of humor. Two of the practical-joking variety decided to dress a lobster up in a costume and toss it back into the deep blue. The thought was that other lobstermen would find the lobster -- dressed in a Barbie outfit, by the way -- and would toss it back. Going into more depth on this story revealed that the real challenge was getting the tiny shoes on Barbie Lobster’s feet. They kinda hoped Barbie would make it through the season, but at last report, in early December, Barbie had been caught and released ten times, but was looking kinda disheveled. If she does turn up again, said the pranksters , "We have our spring fashions all ready to go."

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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