Dec 24, 2018 3 min read

Needing one last trinket to complete my Christmas shopping for my wife, I recently wandered into one of those select jewelry stores off Smithfield Street in downtown Pittsburgh. It was like entering a mortuary.

“I’m looking for some little bauble or bangle for the missus,” I told the clerk, an effete sort with a boutonniere in his lapel who was looking down his nose at the effect of my dirty overshoes on the thick pile carpeting. “How much are those little pins with the green and red stones?” I inquired.

“Those sell for $35,000 apiece, or three for $100,000,” he replied, hastening to wipe my fingerprint smudges and smog from my breath off the glass top of the showcase.

He had the wrong man if he expected me to lose my aplomb. “Well, you get just what you pay for,” I responded as I backed toward the door, tipping my hat to him. “I’ll need to compare a few other prices before I decide … I’m double parked outside … I don’t seem to have my wallet with me … I seem to have mislaid my Esso card … I don’t get paid until Tuesday … she’s waiting at Gimbel’s …”

“Please,” the clerk interrupted. “Spare me the sniveling so characteristic of low-income, budget-oriented social inferiors of your sort. Might I suggest there’s a Cut-Rate Economy Drug Store just around the corner?”

The last I saw of him he was spraying my retreat route through the jewelry store with some kind of incense from an aerosol can.

I hate to be patronized, the cornerstone of my credo being that ours is a society of equals and that money is only relative. Once I got around the corner to the Economy Drug Store, you should have heard me tell off a trashy, $30-a-week clerk for trying to jack up the price on a cheap box of candy.

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They are a bit cautious about a White Christmas – or a white Christmas tree – in Limoges, France. A recent press dispatch disclosed that the Limoges city council ruled that this year no lights would be placed on the community Christmas tree, the largest in France.

Why not? Well, the officials declared they had discovered in past years that the warmth of the bulbs on the Christmas tree attracted starlings. Apparently the starlings decked the boughs with more than holly.

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In the larger context of the Christmas celebration, the foregoing should be taken with a jigger of wry. Accept our sincere expression, however, that readers experience a joyous Christmas and the happiest of holidays.