A Little Christmas Sizzle – by Liam Sweeny.
As you know, I faithfully trawl the weird parts of the internet to find you stories to whet your curious whistles. And I’ll admit, my titles aren’t great, basic, plain, you know, saving the sizzle for an extra portion of the steak. But this particular headline has so much sizzle, I gotta give it to you straight:
“Scrooge-y Behavior: Holiday Season Starts with Inflatable Santa Shooting and Texas Jesus Grinch.”
When I saw this title, I knew that no matter how boring or mundane it might end up being, I was cover it.
So. Santa. Lexington, Kentucky resident Donald Nelson endeavored to crank the holiday spirit to moonshine when he bought an eight-foot Santa for his yard. And one night he heard a shap crack and went out to find Santa on the ground, a plastic puddle of himself. Not one to freak out or be privy to dark speculation, Nelson assumed it was a bird that hit it, or maybe it was a cheap eight-foot Santa. A look at his video camera proved otherwise. It showed a car coming into his cul-de-sac and a flash that could only be interpreted as a handgun shot. And upon inspecting said Santa, they found an exit wound.
Nelson didn’t realize that the Santa – Krampus feud is deadly. How do you not know you live in a Krampus neighborhood? Someone mentioned that it would only be appropriate to go find a giant inflatable Krampus and give it a little fire cracker music, but Nelson just wants to pay his protection money and stay out of it.
And then we go to Texas, where a man dressed in full Grinch costume protested outside of an elementary school with a sign that said ‘Santa is fake, Jesus is real.’ Like all such protesters, the police were called, and while they couldn’t legally arrest him, they got him to leave the school.
A guy that dresses up as a Dr. Seuss character to tell little kids that Santa isn’t real is throwing off serious mixed messages. I don’t know if I’ll be awake during the guy’s sermon. Unless he talks about locusts. Got a thing for locust; I know, its weird.