Note to self: If you go out for dinner on any future Christmas Day in the future, don't go late. Amber and I journeyed to one of our favorite restaurants last night for an 8:45 reservation. The gentleman who led us to our table informed us that service was running slow because "One of our chefs walked out on us" — he did not explain why — and whatever entree we ordered might take as long as an hour to get to us.
I felt sorry for our server who then had to apologize over and over for things that were not his fault…mostly the fact that they were out of so many items including bread. I have never before been in a restaurant that ran out of bread. I was on my cell phone at one point when he came by our table and I told him, "I'm having a pizza delivered." He said, "Good idea. Could you save me a slice?"
A nice part of Christmas being over is that we don't have to hear any more nonsense about a "War on Christmas," though Trump will probably be congratulating himself on winning it until half past April Fool's Day. I do understand people who are deeply religious and who think the holiday should be written out as CHRISTmas but I think they're misdirecting their ire when they bitch about salespeople saying "Happy Holidays!" They should be complaining about the outfits that employ those salespeople doing everything possible to commercialize and profit off You-Know-Who's birthday.
As you may know, I was raised in a family that was half-Jewish and half-Catholic. We celebrated Christmas, we celebrated Hanukkah in all its many spellings…and we would have celebrated Kwanzaa if it had been around back then. Any reason to exchange presents. We even exchanged presents sometimes when there was no holiday in play.
No one attached any devious meaning to "Merry Christmas" or "Seasons Greetings" or "Happy Holidays" or any phrase meant as benevolent and things worked out fine. The best way to deal with religious differences is simply to ignore them. But some people won't because there's no money to be made by doing that.
Todd VanDerWerff doesn't think the political humor on Saturday Night Live is particularly pungent. Neither do I. There's a difference between saying something of substance about a political figure and just portraying him or her as a clown. There have been exceptions but too often, all we get out of SNL is the latter. I agree that The President Show on Comedy Central does a much better job of going after D.T. than S.N.L. So does Seth Meyers…and so does Jordan Klepper's show.