Christmas Morning TV

Christmas fell on a Sunday this year. And so it was a day of inactivity personified.  Just about every business was closed.  Even Wal mart takes a vacation on Christmas Sunday. So for those of us who are tired of reading or listening to music (too those Christmas songs make one tone deaf and weary) and unwilling or uninterested in a Christmas walk or activity outside, what is there to do? When your friends and acquaintances and the crazy relatives have already departed your home with tummies full of Christmas goodies you fed them, what does one do on a Sunday Christmas morning?

TV!  Ah, the bastion of the brain dead and lazy can be useful in those times. So I turned on the idiot box to see what was on view at 10:00 am Christmas Sunday.  Wouldn't you know it. The set was tuned to a station that was airing "Jewel's Christmas Homecoming". Oh my..... I had forgotten about Jewel. Well, I am glad she is alive and found a slot for  possibly another 5 minutes of fame. She was singing one of those hip, modern Christmas songs that make me snarl like Scrooge. How dare Jewel defile Christmas music with that pop pabulum! I quickly looked at the channel guide the cable company provides to find what else was being aired.

It was a B list of Christmas shows that probably couldn't sell itself to TV networks in prime time Christmas airing. That would be three weeks to one week before Christmas Day when sponsors want to air Christmas shows that viewers will see. This would subject the viewers to those Christmas sale ads that sponsors want them to see.  That's probably why the '2012 Holiday Baking Championship' was airing  four years late on Christmas morning. Gee, those Christmas sweets must be stale by now. I skipped that one.  And why was Dolly Parton doing her 'Country Christmas' special on Christmas morning. Celebrities I never heard of filled the airwaves, particularly in re-runs. Why, the long deceased John Denver and and Andy Williams had Christmas specials from more than 25 years ago airing at 10 am on this Christmas 2016 . I paused and ruminated how much I dislike most of television, even on non religious days. I asked myself, "There must be more than this"? (people do talk to themselves after being hit straight on with 'Jewel's Homecoming'. I swear that I am not yet crazy.)

Copying the character from Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner "I bite my wrist, I sucked my blood and cried"...Show me something watch able.  Alas! I' found a flurry of those old religious movies, the kind that are not made any more because the mainstream PV view has been conscripted by atheist and humanist leftists who find any reference to Christianity or other religious belief to be a sacrilege. What fun those old films were. 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' was one on Christmas morning. It was a big budget, fanciful, perhaps silly but fascinating, view of Jesus Christ that is so PC now that it and the other great pro Christianity films can only find a sponsor in the days surrounding Christmas and Easter. I found 'The Nativity Story' too and watched a couple of minutes to relieve my guilt at not being a model of religiosity.

Wow! Next, I stumbled onto the classic 'Santa Claus Captures the Martians'. But I would prefer Santa do something more meaningful than fighting an army from invading Mars, instead perhaps, Santa could capture and destroy all the cell phones in existence. That's it! Restore civilization, Santa. It's my annual Christmas wish. I decided to skip that Martian battle. Another station was showing the classic 50's 'A Christmas Carol', and another had Bing Crosby in 'Holiday Inn', and still another was showing 'It's a Wonderful Life'.  'Miracle on 34th Street' and 'Elf'' were on too.
By then my head was spinning amidst all that holiday TV merriment.  I was beginning to believe I was a member of the Light Brigade in Tennyson's poem, "Into the valley of death" rode this bored and weary Sunday Christmas denizen.  I hallucinated  and wondered whether Santa really existed. TV  can do that to we believers.

But not all was lost! The channel scanning made me so tired I turned off the TV and engaged in my best Christmas activity of all. I took a nap and dreamed of Monday to come.