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Yuletide Good Cheer Gets Confronted By Legalese

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: December 26, 2008

I should say up front that I am a huge fan of the yuletide season. I confess this knowing my fondness for all that is Christmas means I shall never achieve the much-coveted ninth-degree black belt in curmudgeonliness.

Well, fish gotta swim, and all that.

Unlike others in the commentary world, I decline to take offense when stores simultaneously un-box Christmas and Halloween decorations. For me, it's all part of the same continuum, an unbroken festival of mystery, surprise, goodwill and reflections on mortality, punctuated by weekly episodes of college football.

Not for me are the complaints about having heard "Sleigh Ride" and "Winter Wonderland" four-dozen times each before Macy's kicks off its Thanksgiving parade. When it's 85 degrees on the first Saturday of December and you've sweated through your "A Charlie Brown Christmas" T-shirt unloading and standing up 10 feet of fat and sappy Fraser fir, the idea of a tuneful romp in the snow makes for a refreshing fantasy.

(I do, however, as any thinking person does, draw the line at "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.")

God Bless Us, Times Nine

I could go on. In fact, I will. My vast yuletide DVD collection includes nine versions of "A Christmas Carol," including three (!) musicals. I have seen the Ford's Theatre (in Washington, D.C.) stage production at least a half-dozen times, including last week. I can quote from "Mixed Nuts," Nora Ephron's obscure, underappreciated Christmas fable, the way English scholars can quote Shakespeare.

And, 43 years after hearing him quote Luke's gospel for the first time, my throat still tightens whenever Linus, the "Peanuts" gang's blanket-dragging theologian, reveals what Christmas is all about for the muddled Charlie Brown.

However, getting through the season is not without its challenges, some of which have nothing to do with finding great gifts at prices that threaten to make the retailer's children go hungry. Or the finding of a parking place. Or enduring the extended company of relatives. Or identifying the single loose mini-light that darkened the bottom half of your fat and sappy 10-foot Fraser fir.

Although this last item strays perilously near my chief complaint. And for this, I blame lawyers.

Legal Humbuggery

In the matter of Christmas lights: It doesn't matter how carefully they are taken down and lovingly stored. Next year, half of them won't work. That means the purchase of new strings.

That doesn't bother me. They're cheap enough. The problem is the adhesive-backed tags, about the size of car dealer flags, strapped stubbornly at either end, tear-resistant and stuck like barnacles to the underbelly of a right whale.

Nobody reads them, but their size warrants their removal. Who wants a tree decorated with dozens of ugly legal disclaimers? Alas, separating them from the wire requires sharp instruments and the skills of a second-year surgical resident, lest you slit a finger or sever a slender wire.

Most strings come with three disclaimer labels, which is trouble enough. Some have four, including one mandated by California's Proposition 65, requiring the disclosure of cancer-related ingredients in consumer products.

A set of '50s-style bubble lights on ridiculous markdown came with eight well-lawyered chits - four in English, four in Spanish. The lead - the stretch of string between the male plug and the first light - flapped like pennants on a sailboat's forestay. Great for Gasparilla, not so much for the evergreen bough.

Humbug. Like I'm going to break open one of the little bubble vials for a bracing gulp of methylene chloride.

I say: Enough! Next Christmas, give us a break, or a choice, anyway. Retailers: Establish opt-out shelves. Victimhood disclaimer-laden strings over here, self-reliant, clued-in libertarian strings over there.

Christmas veterans, grimly determined to maintain our goodwill despite daunting odds, have enough to fret over. And all those ugly, unnecessary tags, litter in legalese, are unnecessary, time-gobbling, patience-sapping straws on the backs of our straining camels.

I say again: Enough!

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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