Have a Merry War on Christmas

Here's a special holiday message from Glenn Garvin, television columnist for the Miami Herald and a contributing editor at Reason:

Consider the possibility that there's something seriously wrong with you. I mean, really. It's Christmas Day and you're reading a TV blog on the computer instead of counting your loot or bonding with loved ones or smugly contemplating the superiority of your own religious beliefs. (They worship somebody who was born in a manger?) Stranger yet is that you'd think I'm here writing something on Christmas Day. Do you think I don't have a life?

At the very least, I figure you're pretty sick of the whole Christmas business. So, here's an alternative: Watch the world's most peculiar Christmas TV programming marathon. The TV Guide Network is screening the 1987 film Dirty Dancing for 12 straight hours starting at noon. I don't know why. The whole movie takes place in the summer, so there's not some misty Christmas ending to it. It's just Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey dancing to a pretty cool 1960s soundtrack (and no, it does not include Brenda Lee or Rocking Around The Christmas Tree). Oh, and bad-mouthing Ayn Rand novels. But as far as I know, she didn't write about Christmas. Though you gotta think she probably admired Santa for taking his workshop offshore, away from the prying eyes of OSHA and the NLRB. If those elves wanted to work for all the sugarplums they could eat instead of minimum wage, that was their business, right? I can see it now -- The Christmas Sweatshop, An Epic Novel of Capital Formation and Voluntary Association.

Anyway, we're getting off the subject here. Dirty Dancing. Noon. TV Guide Channel. I don't really have any other insights. I'm sorry you didn't get the stuff you wanted for Christmas. Ayn Rand would say it serves you right for lying around like a welfare-state slug expecting somebody to give you something instead of working for it. But I don't have time to talk about it. I've gotta go before the elves start snorting mistletoe again. Merry -- oh, forget it. Just turn on the TV, okay?

Note from Reason management: You are not actually obliged to watch the Dirty Dancing marathon. Enjoy the day however you see fit, with family, with friends, or, if all else fails, with the commenters here at Hit & Run.