I reason during the Unholyday Season
it’s a cinch to be a grinch
and my heart won’t flinch an inch.

Away I stayed from the fray of Black Friday
and although it has become passé
to my angst there is no allay
because Thanksgiving Day, hereby coined Grey Thursday
morphed into the disarray of a Shoppers’ Buffet
which we could do any ****** day!
The box stores with their sidewalk camping and midnight tramping
are the days of yore.
There is no more need to endure
the mob charging the store door and the poor falling on the floor.
The human glob stomped and whomped for the latest TV
on this feverish Unholyday shopping spree, replete with artificial trees, whee!
Dullard bore, what was the allure?!
Heaping more interest burden on the dreaded credit card
which they should discard, or slap it from their hand, beheaded ******.
Drool, fool, as you wait in miserable line for the store steward
the minimum-waged-Howliday-caged (I’m enraged!)
to turn the door keys
while the CEOs are home enjoying their organic turkeys
free of corporate taxes and relaxes, you whacky lackeys.
The wealthy make the rules and these tools choose to be their unhealthy mules
programming them for a detour to the junk food aisle - the obesity fuel.
Onward home they return with their gift bales
to regale the tale of their trails of thrift sales.
“More, more!” they craved – adrift and depraved
to wasteful spending they are enslaved
yet they raved how they braved to “save and save!”.
With nothing in the bank, many sank to an early grave.

Further astray, sooner to swipe your pay, it has encroached on Halloween
the sacred day when the veil is thinnest between
the living & dead – violating that scene.
In October we hear tis-the-treason ****** bells amidst the pumpkin smells
and are prematurely offended by Krissmus lights
eclipsing the autumnal nights – having upended their own joyous delights;
dismissing us of scarecrows, witches, ghosts and assorted frights
who now make their debut before Labor Day
when the summer sky is hot blue and we haven’t yet harvested the hay.
Pray they go away and come back another day!

More to the dismay of the Hellidays:
Three days after Grey Thursday comes Cyber Monday
when the industrial purchasing puppets have a Work Funday.
Their wanting faces are permitted to glow in their monitors and phones
haunting different places, items submitted to their carts; most dutiful drones.
There are no deals that are steals!
You are enrichening Jeffrey Bezos
as if he were Jesus-is-Logos.
Instead, let’s chase the former – The Latter Day Not-a-Saint with axes
and mace his face until he pays some federal taxes
and recycles his litter of cardboard boxes!

After an arduous commercial journey, finally approaches Silent Night
December Twenty Fourth – that very special night
before the day their former Messiah was arguably not born. To this some scorn.
Don’t get uptight!
They celebrate anyway and that’s more than okay.
Their tree heights are festooned with Pagan lights
and Santa - the King of Things is cartooned in the snowy white.
He swipes her camel-toe under the mistletoe
which we all know doesn’t make her a **’ **’ **’.
So, by then, the madness has ceased.
Tender & mild, a release - I feel utter peace.
As bedtime approaches she slides a hand on my leg, no need to beg
yes, a clinch for the grinch……
and behold, it does grow…  and by much more than an inch!
Pardon me, but it’s not my hard heart.
As I muffle an odorless ****
I realize God is with everyone and all of it. It/He/She is not apart.
When the midnight hour chimes from a nearby tower
I humbly thank God - my Higher Power
generously blessing me - an aging scrooge
joyously shooting, still youthful & raging, ******.

Jeffrey Schmitz 12/2-Cyber Monday/2019