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Dealing with the post-Christmas fallout of unwrapped ideas

3:22 PM Mon, Dec 29, 2008 | Permalink
Jack Perry

-- If you're bummed out about Christmas being over, don't feel bad. I'm sure a few radio stations will begin playing Christmas music within a couple of weeks.

-- The bad news for the economy: Americans spent less this holiday season. The worse news: We consumers are still broke and will be even more broke when those credit-card bills arrive. We did what we could, but it just didn't work.

The couple in the AP photograph to the left were married on Christmas Day in an ice chapel built for the occasion in Fairbanks, Alaska. Why would anyone get married on Christmas Day? From my childhood, I remember friends with birthdays near Christmas complaining that their relatives would give them just one gift to serve as a birthday/Christmas gift. I wonder if this couple received wedding/Christmas gifts.

-- Doing some last-minute stocking shopping on Christmas Eve, I noticed that Valentine's candy had already started pushing Christmas candy off the shelves. And there were still 53 shopping days until Valentine's Day. Look for those end-of-the-summer sales to start sometime around March.

-- If you nearly pull a muscle playing baseball on the Wii you bought your kids for Christmas and then get out of breath boxing one round on the Wii, does that mean Wiis are cool and realistic? Or does it just mean you're really out of shape?

-- Did you grow tired of your Christmas guests? Consider the Pennsylvania family that found a man had spent several days in its attic during the holidays. He had allegedly climbed down occasionally to help himself to food and clothes. "When he came down from the attic, he was wearing my daughter's pants and my sweat shirt and sneakers," homeowner Stacy Ferrance said. I'd hide too if I were dressed like that.

-- Are you overwhelmed and saddened by the idea of taking down the Christmas lights? Don't rush. If you can put it off until about the middle of June, you'll reach the halfway point, and you can just leave them up. Then you can try to convince your neighbors that your ahead of the game, like some radio stations, instead of behind it.