• by Jack Feuer , December 10, 2008

Christmas is good for the Jews. Except me.

Allow me to elucidate. At Christmastime, everybody is all merry and shit. They sing songs, exchange gifts, go on vacations or get it on with co-workers in the company storeroom. They decorate their houses with twinkling colored lights and cover evergreens in their living rooms with popcorn strings and angel balls. They drink eggnog and eat thick slices of ham. (Treif, yes, but would it kill you to live a little?)

All of that to celebrate the birth of a nice Jewish boy from a working-class section of Bethlehem who made his parents proud. What's not to like?

Well, plenty, and not just because I have to share my birthday with the Son of God (props to my home goys), who gets all the attention instead of me on Dec. 25.

No, I don't like the holidays because that's when everybody goes nuts for Macy's.

The movies. (Macy's is running a spot in heavy rotation featuring clips from the gazillion films that reference the former fancy dry goods outlet.) The fawning and fussing over the window displays. That damn parade. Even Santa worked at Macy's.

Bah, humbug.

Macy's is not the soft, chewy center of holiday cheer that tradition would have you believe. Au contraire, mes merry amis. Beneath that shiny shopper façade beats the black heart of the covert propaganda wing of an ancient order of evil marketers that have been trying to take over the world through advertising, product placement and direct mail for 150 years.

I am convinced this is true. In fact, I'm sure of it, because I'm being stalked by this so-called "department store." And it all started when I got a Macy's card.

Every day of the year when I open my mailbox--I'm not exaggerating--an army of red envelopes pours out, each one containing "special" discounts exclusively for Macy's cardholders. I also get a coupon for my birthday. And discounts to be used only on specific days for "special" sales.

There must also be a sinister Macy's cyber-ops unit because offers sometimes pop up in my AOL inbox, too.

At Christmastime, this endless outpouring swells by several orders of magnitude. And it added potential injury to insult during the season because Macy's also sends catalogs thicker than a hardbound copy of "War and Peace"--which, if you're not careful, spring out of the mailbox at your head like an ICBM.

Macy's sells an astounding number of different products, so being a cardholder with umpteen exclusive coupons should be a good thing. But when you read the fine print on the back of the coupons, you find a monstrous list of exceptions that prevent unsuspecting users from getting a discount on anything but a bedsheet.

This is not how one responsibly sells peace, love or crock pots. And I fear that as the nation falls deeper into recession, marketers' desperation will move them to mimic Macy's, creating even more commercial conspiracies to enslave our shopping souls and max out our mailboxes.

So whatever your religious preference, by all means have a happy holiday. But don't even think about signing up for a card at Pottery Barn.