Sniper Santa

I went to the Kentucky store at the mall last night looking for postcards with maps of Kentucky. No luck. A Taste of Kentucky, Border's, and Barnes & Noble all sell exactly the same postcards shot by a single Kentucky photographer, many of them back in the 1980s. Yawn.

Since it was raining, I decided to walk through the mall before going home. I ended up in a store that sells nothing but Christmas decorations. The trend toward black as the favored color in Christmas decor, which I knew had been taken over by the middle class when I first saw black ornaments for sale at Target in 2006, was bad enough. This year an even more ominous trend is developing.

Nutcracker ornaments are on the attack. Used to be, the only weapon a nutcracker could use to block access to the candy canes on a Christmas tree was a sword. This year, some nutcrackers are carrying rifles.

As if that's not bad enough, so is Santa. It's one thing if you're a hunter and want to buy a Santa-with-shotgun-in-john-boat-with-ducks-giggling-behind-him ornament. But why would you buy a Santa-in-snowshoes-with-rifle-and-scope ornament? Who could possibly need a Sniper Santa?

It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Santa Claus is watching you."