Decorating Aid

Ahh Christmas. A time for holiday traditions, smiling children, mall Santas and holiday decorating wars. I'm sure you have neighbors in your area that go all out as well as those that do little or nothing. This year I have been pretty busy, so even with my excitement for Christmas' impending arrival I haven't yet had the chance to do little else beyond stringing up the lights. This was not a huge concern to me until I came home from work on Monday only to discover someone had helped me get the decorating started. My wife phoned to let me know that there was a shiny new decoration adorning our porch railing.

Once I got home from work I assessed the offending decoration only to find that it contained little festive and no mention of Christmas whatsoever. Why they decided this orange slab of nasty hanging off of my house, would brighten my day is beyond me, but there it was.

For those that don't know, we have been blessed this year with an election campaign for Christmas. With the vote scheduled for late January, we have to put up with politicians clamoring for attention over the holidays. I'm thinking that a new tactic by the party is that they can capitalize on Canadian's politeness and the holiday bustle. If signs are randomly hung, they will have people that will be too polite or busy to have them removed. As a result, my week has been filled with attempts to discover the identity of the person who thought this was a good idea, as well as getting the same person to remove the sign from my property. They had the audacity to drop a slip of paper in my mailbox thanking me for my support. The paper contains an address that never I have trouble getting to when anyone is and a phone number with a voice mail that nobody seems to be answering for me. Several messages in, both voice and e-mail, and I still have this delightful festive decoration tied to my home.

Given the holidays I am going to be adding a sign to the top of it that says "A Merry Christmas and Happy New year from" to the top of it in the hopes that political correctness will do the job that contacting the party can't. Maybe being tied to a non-generic holiday greeting will galvanize them to action in fears of alienating non christian voters. So Merry Christmas from Chris and the NDP, whom I expect to hear from soon.

Now I have to worry about guerilla signage and canvassers during the holiday season I think I'm going to have to spend a little more money that I'd planned this month and invest in The Mercer Report's fantastic new product, the canvassizer.