Horse ‘Em
One of my favorite Christmas commercials is the one we can easily identify with a simple phrase, “Horse ‘Em”. If you are not familiar with this commercial, Polaroid would have us believe Santa Claus employs a wicked looking elf to help him determine the best gifts for children.
This is a far-fetched concept, as we all know most of Santa’s elves are on disability after eating hamburgers tainted with the “mad-reindeer” disease. Santa currently employs tone-deaf Oompa-Loompas kicked out of the chocolate factory for their inability to sing. They had a choice: Go back to Loompaland, a diet of mashed green caterpillars, and avoid any run-ins with snozzwragers and whangdoodles for the rest of their lives; or, go to the North Pole like migrant workers, drink all the hot cocoa they want, and live in the relative peace of the toy factory.
Of course, while this is a fact, we can also assume the wicked looking elf in the commercial may be a vegetarian, and therefore avoided the mad-reindeer fiasco. I’m not sure how he gets along with the Oompa-Loompa Local 100 Union, but that would be a story for another article.
In the commercial, as Santa reads the “Dear Santa” letters with the wicked little elf looking over his shoulder, he struggles to understand the exact toy the child is describing. Reading aloud with a furrowed brow, the letter goes something like this…
“For Christmas I would most like to receive a Dukem Nukem Blastroids 2000 Arcade pack, but not the Blastorids pack with the four bonus levels, but the one with the power section. And please don’t forget it must be …”
Santa frowns, and turns to the ugly elf. The elf shrugs and looks puzzled. He holds up a toy rocking horse and says in a gruff voice (most vegetarian elves have gruff voices), “Horse’em?”
Santa nods vigorously.
This is repeated with another child’s letter.
The third letter Santa opens reads something like the first two, asking for some crazy product in exact detail, but out of this letter comes a small Polaroid photo showing the exactly toy described. Santa and the Elf turn to each other and say, “Ahhh!”
I think this is a favorite commercial (second only to the Little Santa riding a triple-blade electric razor head through the snow) because it is so easy to appreciate Santa’s position. As my beautiful wife, Karen, and I considered our Christmas list this year, we came across a few people where we just looked at each other and muttered with a shrug, “Horse ‘em?”
Can you relate?
I was among the fortunate this year in not receiving any rocking horses, from Santa or anyone else. And, while it was tempting, Karen and I avoided the rocking horses in our gift giving. This temptation we see exploited by Polaroid in really just a cop out in the gift giving tradition; it is an easy way out instead of really considering the other person receiving the gift.
We would do well to remember what we are told in Philippians 2:4-5, “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus…” The whole Christmas season is wrapped around the attitude we find in Jesus Christ and expressed in these verses – putting the interests of others before ourselves.
We also find this in Matthew 22:37-39, when Jesus tells us, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Yes, I know this sounds great for the easy people on our Christmas list, but what about the really difficult people where it is just so easy to say, “Horse ‘em?” For this, we must return to the reason we are giving a gift in the first place… because remember, we are not forced to give. In every situation, we do have a choice in the matter and can decide a Christmas card is enough, maybe a nice meat stick made from ground reindeer would be ok, or just a telephone call. In any case, if a gift is warranted, then the thought behind it should not be on how easy it is for us to make the purchase, but on what the person would appreciate and what would make them happy.
Another tool for finding the right Christmas gifts is prayer. For Karen and I, our prayers were answered many times throughout the season in how the Lord not only provided the resources necessary, but also the perfect gifts for the people on our list.
Fortunately for us, there were no tone-deaf Oompa-Loompas or wicked looking elves.
Just curious… how did you do this year in your giving? Did you have a few where you had to “Horse ‘em?”
Glenn Sasscer
www.glennsasscer.com
