If your broken heart needs a little mending and you’re in need of a shot of Holiday Hope, make your way to the Target store on Sports Arena Boulevard Saturday morning.
That’s when hundreds of law enforcement officers escort their young guests on a shopping spree, leading them by the hand down the store’s aisles and helping them select toys, clothes, books and video games.
The annual Shop with a Cop on Dec. 5 actually begins that day at SeaWorld San Diego, where busloads of children are placed into the custody of officers, agents, detectives and other badge- and gun-toting adults who sit with them at breakfast and take in an exclusive holiday show at the park.
While the kids disembark from the bus grinning shyly — they know the morning is all about buying toys — who gets more out of the meeting is debatable.
Standing dutifully in a receiving line, burly men (and women) wearing mirrored sunglasses chatter and chirp as they wait to see who they are paired with for the morning.
It’s a welcome diversion for the men and women who have made a career of responding to life’s darker moments, interacting with those among us who are awful, sick or simply having a bad day.
It’s also a needed reminder for the kids who come from struggling families that not every day has to be about just getting by.
For bystanders it’s a needed tonic for the holiday blues, whether they are caused by the stress and pressure of holiday expectations or the solar plexus smacking event of mass shootings day after day.
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Unfortunately the year’s long trend of dutiful sensitivity introspection has me rethinking my Christmas playlist.
There was a time when I would mindlessly hum along or tap my finger to the rhythm of a favorite holiday song.
But times and sensibilities have changed.
“Santa Baby” used to get my head bobbing as I waited for a stoplight to turn green, but now it gives me pause as I stop to consider the commercialization that’s espoused in the lyrics.
Gimme, gimme, gimme is the song’s theme usually sung by a woman. Not only does the song emphasize a gold-digging philosophy but it also disenfranchises a woman by making her dependent on a man for trinkets and baubles. Where are her demands for equal pay, equitable treatment and paid maternity leave — things that might actually improve her life rather than give her pleasure for a week or so?
As for “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” the song about someone trying to convince his paramour to stay a bit longer takes on an unsettling hue when you consider that despite her protesting, the man won’t let her leave his apartment. Any good DA could charge the crooner with false imprisonment and possibly kidnapping. Who knew holiday songs could be so dark?
