THE BAH-HUMBUGGERS!

In honor of the upcoming Holiday season I am compiling a list of those businesses and people who seem to ruin the festivities for those of us who enjoy the Holiday season. Whether it be a business who raises the prices of their items by 50% and then puts them on sale for 35% off, or a person who wants to have all of the holiday festivities canceled because they don’t like the color green, these are the people who are eligible for the prestige of being nominated for a BAH-HUMBUGGER AWARD!

I am also looking for reader participation in helping compile nominations. If you would like to add a nominee for the BAH-HUMBUGGER please email me at wmay@thereporteronline.com or post your nominee under the comment section. Please include the nominee and reason you feel they should be nominated. Also please include your first name and where you are from. (Ex. Steve, North Wales). I will update the BAH-HUMBUGGER page as I receive them.

I would personally like to take the honor of handing my first nomination to Montgomery Mall for their decision on ruining the display for Santa Claus. One may say that change is a good thing but I would mark this change as a serious DOWNGRADE.

Christmas is a very commercialized holiday as it is, but Montgomery Mall has taken it one step further by selling corporate naming rights on the Santa Claus display to THP Properties. Not only that but the design for the display is awful.

For those of you who have not yet seen it, the display for Santa looks like some shack you would find deep in the backwoods of Alabama. There is a tin roof that covers the front porch so if you are wandering the mall and you are on the second level the view of Santa Claus is completely obstructed. When I went downstairs and I saw that this was the Santa display, I was expecting to see Santa sitting on the front porch of this shack in a Nascar t-shirt with about 5 dogs sprawled around his feet. I was even more surprised that they didn’t throw in some broken down appliances and then topped it off with old furniture. I didn’t know that the Montgomery Mall was stealing their decorating sense from some country bumpkins from Alabama. I think Mr. & Mrs. Claus sitting on the front porch performing dueling banjos would have been the icing on the cake.

The worst part was when I went down and noticed that there were THP Properties logos everywhere. They even went as far as to have a THP logo on the wall behind where Santa resides. That was what really had me shaking my head wondering if nothing was too sacred for a company’s logo.

I am surprised that they don’t have Santa sitting in a red coat that is plastered with THP logos or maybe when Santa asks the kids what they want for Christmas, Santa drops the suggestion of “a new house built by THP Properties.” I wonder if after the kids have their photos taken with Santa the little keepsake picture frame comes with a sappy message saying “this wonderful holiday moment built by THP…and remember when you want a home built by a name you can trust call THP!”

That was my true inspiration for starting the BAH-HUMBUGGER AWARDS and why I am giving the first nomination to Montgomery Mall. Congratulations Montgomery Mall, you sold out Santa Claus!