You had to have a heart of stone not to be cheered this week by a story from Texas, in which an abseiling Santa Claus got his beard caught in his rope while hovering 30 feet above a shopping centre, and eventually had to be rescued by the fire brigade, writes Frank McNally
Something like this was long overdue. For one thing, abseilers seem increasingly to be cornering the market for retail-related Santa work, even though the physical fitness that allows them to make such dramatic arrivals at their grottos should also disqualify them from the role.
By contrast, the jolly fat men who rely on seasonal employment in department stores are in danger of being squeezed out, unless they employ stunt performers to do their action scenes.
But the Texan Santa's main crime in my book was arriving at his grotto, by whatever means, in the middle of November. That the culprit had to abseil down an 80-foot advertising hoarding - because the shopping centre didn't have a chimney - only added to the tackiness of the event. Which is why the reports of his embarrassment were so enjoyable.
It appears he was about half-way down when his stick-on beard got tangled in the rope. Unable to free it, he was thrown a scissors to cut the obstruction, during which operation his hat fell off. Then, for unspecified reasons - perhaps he was immobilised by shame - he could not complete his rope descent. He had to climb down the fire brigade's ladder instead.
Sadly, the fiasco was witnessed by children, some of whom were reported to be in tears. They probably now need counselling as a result. In fact, if there are any kids reading this who have been affected by the issues raised, I recommend they google Francis Church's famous editorial "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" immediately.
Unfortunately, a setback for one Texas shopping centre will do little to discourage the commercialisation of the season. I notice it is de rigueur this year for decorative street-lights to be low-energy, as the crusade to save the planet gathers pace. But - stand back there while I move this large, unwieldy metaphor into place - the Polar ice-caps of children's imagination continue to be threatened by exposure to too much Christmas too soon, and nobody does anything about it.
Of course I have no scientific evidence that this is happening. My own kids seem to be as much in thrall to Santa as I ever was, even as they scour the Argos catalogue for stocking-filler ideas (no matter how many Argos catalogues I throw in the green bin, there always seems to be another one about the house). But if middle age carries any entitlement, it must be the conviction that Christmases used to be better.
It's not just human Santas abseiling down the walls of shopping centres in November I object to. The plastic illuminated ones already appearing on the walls of houses in my neighbourhood are just as bad. I feel like organising a concerned parents group to march on the homes of the worst offenders. On the other hand, I know these people are only recreational users. It's the pushers we need to target.
There is never a good a date to die, arguably. But for a person of renown, whose demise might have been expected to make the headlines, this day 44 years ago was particularly bad timing. So it happened for two of the 20th centuries' best-known writers, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley, who both expired on November 22nd, 1963, when all the world's attention was on Dallas.
Neither man would have been unduly concerned at the misfortune. Huxley took LSD on his deathbed, the last of his famous experiments with mind-altering substances. And as a devout Christian, whose best-known children's novel has an evangelical message, Lewis can't have placed too much value on earthly fame.
He was born in east Belfast, now home to Stormont. And although the recent film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was shot in New Zealand - which has cornered the market for other-worldly scenery - it was Ireland's north that provided the imaginative backdrop to much of his writing.
Specifically, it is said that when Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy travelled, via a wardrobe, into the magical kingdom of Narnia, there to do battle with the white witch, the real inspiration for their enchanted surroundings was the Mourne Mountains.
If so, arguably, modern-day Northern Ireland has returned Lewis's compliment. There is certainly something magical in its transformation from the frozen wasteland of yore. And in place of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, romantics might see the North's four main political parties, whose adventures led to the peace agreement.
Cynics might look on it differently. The big difference, I suppose, is that only two of the parties ended up ruling Narnia, having emerged from the wardrobe wearing the other pair's clothes.
Be that as it may, it strikes me that C.S. Lewis might have contributed - however unwittingly - to another development of recent times. In his pre-liberation Narnia, as you'll recall, the witch had arranged that it would be "always winter, but never Christmas". Now the witch is gone. And for good or bad, the winter/Christmas arrangement seems to have been reversed.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie