All I want for Christmas – a rebuttal

Here’s a letter I sent to the Newspaper in New London regarding an opinion article from Joyce Conlon. Here is a picture of her… She’s kind of frightening and I didn’t know that when I wrote this……
All I Want For Christmas…
Is for Joyce Conlon to shut up. She recounts the simpler days of consumerism for children, I’m sure a time we all miss. However, she goes on to butcher the Christmas spirit with her demands for gifts. I, as a reader, am glad to know that she recognizes she’s part of a dysfunctional family, though I wish she could see that she’s at the head of it.
Christmas is a religious holiday, not a shopping holiday – despite what the ad execs on 5th Ave. tell you. If you’re not celebrating the religious aspects of Christmas, perhaps you shouldn’t celebrate it at all. I’m not Jewish and I don’t celebrate Chanukah. It seems to me that Conlon is simply celebrating the fact that her family doesn’t like her very much and I can certainly understand why – certain types of gifts are banned by her, meaning that she will not accept them. Wow.
I have an idea for her kids: Take her money and go and buy her gift certificates to all the stores you want things from. When she refuses, that’s just that much more loot for you guys. To say that a gift is unacceptable leaves me utterly speechless. She mentions that her family (Husband and Children) says they don’t know what to get her. I’ve got an idea for them, a lump of coal. Of course they don’t know what to give her, she’s clearly the most judgmental person I’ve ever heard of.
I was under the impression that Christmas was the celebration of the birth of Christ. I’m not sure how celebrated Christ is when presents are roundly refused. Imagine Mary and Joseph telling the Three Wise Men, “Sorry Wise Men, you didn’t read our list. Frankincense and just plain old Gold were not on our list. If you want to give this to us, you better get to know us a little better first.” Clearly she and I are on different wave lengths. I hope it’s only her and the not the rest of the world because I cannot maintain a faith in humanity that shuns gifts.
Perhaps she could start giving the gift of love, unconditionally; especially in these times where love is so scarce. Perhaps then she would get gifts she can accept as a symbol of the givers love for her. If her idea of love is “a Kodak moment”, I’m sorry for her and those affected by her. She could always go and actually read Dickens’s A Christmas Story to find out that Christmas is not where you shop, it’s what’s in your heart. In the immortal words of Tiny Tim, “God Bless everyone!” – even Mrs. Conlon (whether she accepts or not).