TFP Column: Santa Is Coming ... Beware

 

While experiencing the briefest of mourning periods during the election cycle, I am back once more within the pages of the TFP website this week.  Self-chastised for being consistently wrong about the results of those elections yet again (which is why I don't bet), it seemed only fitting to change my focus from the painful subject of my own abjectly miserable performance and turn instead to the coming holiday season.

I think that you'll find "Santa Is Coming ... Beware" an amusing (if not troubling) effort, dripping with the kind of sarcasm required to put the commercial aspect of the holiday and it's symbolic leader in a slightly different (OK, warped) perspective.  Of course it's not surprising that there should be some contradictions in the secular version of mythical character who ends up being merged over time with a religious figure who actually existed.  Be aware however, that my analysis of someone whose traditional depiction bares a vague similarity to my own does not mean that I have spared my subject in any way, or that we share any of the potential personality quirks that I ascribe to him.

Since it's already a bit past mid-week, you're lucky that the 'Star' edition has already hit the streets to provide more serious counterpoint to my more fanciful offering.  With the weekend edition yet to come, there's plenty more still to look forward to, especially in Toledo and Northwest Ohio.  

What else would you expect however, from Toledo's largest Sunday circulation newspaper, one which has been named by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalism as the Best Weekly Newspaper in Ohio for the last five years running.  I'm speaking of course, of the Toledo Free Press.