                             HAPPY HOLIDAYS AGAIN
                by Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist


          The  holiday  season  is  here  again,  and  there's  "something
     special" in the  air.    It's  the  aroma being given off by our mail
     person, who expired in our driveway several days ago while attempting
     to deliver 300 pounds of  holiday  greeting cards.  These were mostly
     from businesses sending us heartfelt preprinted  bulk-mailed  holiday
     wishes such as:

       *"'Tis now a time for Peace on Earth
	"And Joy for all Mankind
	"So let us know if we can help
	"Unclog your sewer line."*

          But we don't have time to read  all  our  holiday wishes.  We're
     too busy engaging in traditional holiday activities such  as  Setting
     Up The Electric Train That Doesn't Work.  I bought this train set for
     my son on his first Christmas, when he was 2 months old, and the only
     way he knew to play with it was by putting it  in  his  mouth.  So it
     developed  some kind of serious train disorder, probably drool in the
     motor, and  every  year, when we finally get it hooked up and plugged
     in, it just sits there, humming.  The Little Engine on Valium.	

          But we can't spend too much time playing with the train, because
     we have to get  on  with  the tradition of Replacing All the Bulbs In
     The  Christmas  Tree Lights.   We  save  big  money  by  buying  very
     inexpensive lights that were manufactured by  Third  World  residents
     who have no words in their language for "fire code." These lights use
     special bulbs that are designed to stand up  under virtually any kind
     of punishment - except having electricity go through them.    If  the
     train isn't humming too loud, we can actually hear the  bulbs  scream
     when we plug them in, telling us it's time once again  to  troop down
     to the  drugstore,  where  we spend approximately $14,000 per holiday
     season on replacement bulbs, many of which have been preburned-out at
     the factory for our holiday convenience.

          But we can't spend  too  much time enjoying our tree, because we
     have to get down to  the  mall  to  watch  the traditional and highly
     competitive  Holiday Shoppers' Hunt For One  Of  The  Four  Remaining
     Department Store Sales Clerks in North America.    "Ho  ho  ho!,"  we
     shout as a clerk is flushed out of  Housewares  and makes a desperate
     dash  through Small Appliances, pursued by a baying pack  of  holiday
     shoppers, slashing the air with sharpened Visa cards.

          "Jingle bells!    Jingle  bells!" sings Mister Low-Fidelity Mall
     Loudspeaker as loud as he can right in our ear.  He sings it over and
     over and over, because  he knows it's the kind of traditional holiday
     song that we can listen  to  for an entire nanosecond without growing
     tired of it.  "Jingle bells!,"  it  goes.    "Jingle  bells!   Jingle
     bells, *dammit!  Jingle bang...*"

          Uh-oh!  It looks like Mr.   Low-Fidelity  Mall  Loudspeaker  has
     been  shot  by another important holiday tradition, the  Increasingly
     Desperate  Guy  Shopper.    He's  Trying to find something  for  that
     Special  Someone in his life, who has made it clear  that  this  year
     she'd like something a little more personal than what he got her last
     year,  which was a trailer hitch.  So he's edging warily through  the
     aisles  of  what  is,  for  guys,  a  very  dangerous  section of the
     department store  - a section where, sometimes, a woman wearing scary
     quantities of makeup lunge out from behind pillars and spray you with
     fragrances with such names  as  Calvin  Klein's  Clinical Depression.
     All around are potential gift  items,  but there's no way for the guy
     shopper to tell which ones would  be  thoughtful and appropriate, and
     which  ones  would  cause that Special Someone  to  place  an  urgent
     conference  call so she could inform all her  friends  simultaneously
     what a bonehead she is hooked up with.

          Last holiday season, I went to a department store  with a friend
     named  Joel,  who was trying to buy something for Mary.    He  became
     badly  disoriented  in the scarf section, which featured a display of
     tiny  fragile  cloth  wisps  that had no imaginable function and that
     cost as  much  per  wisp as a radial tire.  It looked to me like some
     kind of holiday  prank,  but Joel, rapidly losing brain function from
     breathing a department-store atmosphere that was two parts oxygen and
     17  parts  cologne, grabbed one  basically  at  random  and  actually
     *bought* it.  But that was  not  his  major gift purchase.  His major
     gift  purchase  was  something  totally  romantic,  something    that
     represents  the  ultimate  in  traditional  holiday  gift-giving:   a
     jogging bra.  I am not making this up.  "She'll love it!" he said.  I
     agreed,  but  only because I knew that if he didn't  finish  shopping
     soon, he'd start throwing money directly into wastebaskets.

          Speaking  of  which, I need to get my holiday butt over  to  the
     Toys  Sure "R" Expensive Considering How Fast They Break store before
     they run  out  of Giant Radioactive Nose Worms From Space or whatever
     popular heavily advertised holiday-toy concept my son is hoping Santa
     will bring him.  I doubt that Santa will come to our house personally
     this year.  The reindeer  would go berserk if they got a whiff of the
     mail person.
