Economies of Scale have to be utilized...

Christmas and Hanukkah Merger

Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Hanukkah will merge. An industry source said that the deal had been in the works for about 1300 years.

While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we're told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high-quality service during the Fifteen Days of Chrismukah, as the new holiday is being called.

Massive layoffs are expected, with lords a-leaping and maids a-milking being the hardest hit. As part of the conditions of the agreement, the letters on the dreydl, currently in Hebrew, will be replaced by Latin, thus becoming unintelligible to a wider audience.

Also, instead of translating to "A great miracle happened there," the message on the dreydl will be the more generic "Miraculous stuff happens." In exchange, it is believed that Jews will be allowed to use Santa Claus and his vast merchandising resources for buying and delivering their gifts.

One of the sticking points holding up the agreement for at least three hundred years was the question of whether Jewish children could leave milk and cookies for Santa even after having eaten meat for dinner. A breakthrough came last year, when Oreos were finally declared to be Kosher. All sides appeared happy about this.

A spokesman for Christmas, Inc., declined to say whether a takeover of Kwanzaa might not be in the works as well. He merely pointed out that, were it not for the independent existence of Kwanzaa, the merger between Christmas and Chanukah might indeed be seen as an unfair cornering of the holiday market. Fortunately for all concerned, he said, Kwanzaa will help to maintain the competitive balance. He then closed the press conference by leading all present in a rousing rendition of "Oy Vey, All Ye Faithful."

I've just realized that for the entire life of this blog on this site I have not been back to Sarasota Florida. Basically since the last grandparent died in 1994 we got out of dodge and headed down to that place. It started off when my parents made plans to visit my Dad's bauxite salesman for the materials that he used in his plant that he managed. The guy also turned out to be my Dad's best friend for some reason they had this unique bond. He was cool beyond belief, as a true Dutchman. His name was Bart Hendrix and during WW2 he survived by eating the fish he caught when the Germans occupied the Netherlands. After the war he vowed never to eat seafood again and everytime we went out to eat no one at the table could order seafood as it would cause him a vomiting reaction. Other than that he had a impressive art collection and represented his country for the Dutch water polo team for the Olympics. For the first years we spent it at a place called the Half Moon Beach Club on Lido Key since that is where we stayed for a couple of years while he still was in good health to make the trip and a couple of years after. In some ways we were just trying to relive those first couple of trips with him.

Then my sister died and we ended up looking for a place away from the other regular visitors during the holidays. Basically it boiled down to my parents not wanting to face the families of the other kids that we got to be friends with. So we had out holidays in a condo complex we rented until 2003. That was when things started to launch in terms of the Real Estate Bubble. Every old couple from the Tri-State area started buying up condos thinking that snowbirds would pay their fees, mortgage and taxes for the entire year off of a few months.

My Mom ended up moving around but still keeping in touch with her friends that she made when she hung at that condo complex before all of the old crew moved on to cheaper places to live. In the last few years she ended up renting a house from an older Gay couple and that is where we are today.

Sarasota was back then a W.A.S.P haven and also for nice corn fed Mid-Western retirees that were extremely frugal and never knew the word debt. I remember in '94 that when my Dad had a craving for Italian and we looked in the Yellow pages the only listing was Domino's. Things have changed as now it's a pretty cosmopolitan place. Although old money screams Republican, especially since it was Katherine Harris's Congressional District after that "election" in 2000 you can get any variety of cuisine.

I"m just looking forward to getting out of the cold and grabbing some vitamin D. Hanging with refined people with tons of $ and a few scattered rednecks is something that I have missed for 2.5 years. There's nothing hanging at bar close to the beach sucking down a cold one, slurping down some oysters with a guy wearing polo on one side and another dude with a bandanna.

As I get closer I think may post again about this topic.