Scott Bremner         

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around Erie, even if the mood is stunted because the jingle bells you hear are coming from the collar of the neighbor’s Chihuahua buried somewhere in your backyard.

This much snow this time of year has a polarizing effect (sorry) on people. While some are filled with the Christmas spirit others hate the thought of winter roads and boots filled with Christmas slush.

For me it’s nice to see something that screams CHRISTMAS that isn’t a commercial.

This year we have an AFLAC duck leading Santa’s sleigh, a GEICO homage to Rudolph and a couple of Big Lots animated deer talking to a moving wicker and lights likeness.

And, you know, nothing really screams CHRISTMAS like a crowded Saturday morning at Big Lots. Especially with boots filled with slush.

But the winner of the Biggest Holiday Commercial Offender so far must be the Visa ad with the perfectly synchronized people buying gifts as the credit card money machine pumps the cha-ching in perfect rhythm until one mother has the audacity to stop to write a check.

“She’s using money she actually has? The GALL!!”

Sure, if you use plastic as a debit card you pay as you go but the company makes few overt distinctions.

This year 641 million American credit cards will be used to ring up 100 billion dollars in holiday presents.

That’s part of the total 1.5 trillion dollar annual buying frenzy card toting Americans ring up.

And the fact that the spot glosses over how some people will be paying off those holiday gifts for the next three years?

That isn’t even the worst part of the commercial.

Every single customer that swipes his or her card through the reader does it UPSIDE DOWN!

Just about everyone born this side of the covered wagon knows that the magnetic strip is on the top of the back of credit cards.

But the marketers, no doubt wanting to push the VISA name as often as possible, have customers swipe the bottom of the card throughout the entire spot!

Every time I see it I get downright Grinchy!

So let’s all take the time now to get our priorities straight, to enjoy the season with each other.

Soon enough it will be January, we’ll be dealing with the holiday hangover and still trying to fish the neighbor’s dog out of the back yard.

There is an instinctual human connection between the holidays and going home.

Images of a warm hearth and friendly family faces are as indelible a part of this time of year as reindeer or mistletoe.

How heartwarming it is to hear about a soldier home for Christmas; how sad to hear about a traveler stuck in some airport lobby trapped by a rogue blizzard.

Like salmon in the fall or robins in the spring, regardless of the length or arduous nature of the journey, something in us must return home for the holidays.

That brings us to Head Drive in Millcreek, and five families who are going through a December pilgrimage somewhere just this side of the Twilight Zone.

It began more than three weeks ago, when the neighbors discovered gas levels in their homes at what were being described as explosive levels.

Investigators quickly narrowed the field of suspects to a well drilled behind a nearby church.

Preliminary efforts to dampen the well dampened gas levels in the homes, but not enough to allow the families back.

So more severe measures were then used, including filling the well with salt water to force it to close.

That helped even more, but as the water level fluctuated so did the gas levels.

Investigators continued to shake their heads and five families at the Best Western continued to live out of their suitcases.

As of this writing the families don’t know if they’ll be home for Christmas.

The investigators are beginning to believe that the well might have to be filled with cement.

The Red Cross continues to underwrite the hotel stays because that expense just isn’t covered under homeowner’s insurance.

And while it’s never easy to be booted from your home, the fact that these people have been ousted at this time of year is touching a nerve.

Church members continue to offer gift certificates and other means for food and clothes.

A local restaurant is offering to give all the family members a Christmas Eve dinner, whether they have returned to their houses or not.

We may not know yet exactly how to correct the problem.

The Big Fix might have to run its course in its own time.

But as human beings we know, somewhere at a gut level, that it’s wrong for people to be away from their homes.

Especially at this time of year.

The Mitchell Report critical of the misuse of steroids and human growth hormones throughout pro baseball spends a lot of time naming names, and in our celebrity driven world the question of who’s who on the list is taking a lot of the media attention.

I certainly don’t hold those players blameless for their actions, but c’mon.

This goes a lot deeper than that.

Let’s go back for a moment to August 12th, 1994.

Major League players had just walked off the job, which led to the cancellation of the first post season by any major American sport due to labor issues.

The owners, citing dwindling finances and a growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots, pushed for a salary cap that the union would not accept.

The strike lasted 234 days, until April of the next year when a federal ruling went against the owners and the players returned under the conditions of the old agreement.

But fans were leaving in droves, tired of the greed they saw on both sides from whiny millionaires unable to split more money than the fans would ever see in their lives.

The game was back but the interest was waning.

Something had to happen to save the sport.

And something did, in the form of a majestic home run boom that saw forty year old records fly away as easily as a mid-80’s fastball in the hands of a new breed of muscled warriors with names like Sosa, and McGuire and suddenly, Bonds.

Even pitchers whose numbers had started to slip found new life late in their careers, the Pettittes and Clemens whose late rebounds were credited to drive and off-field conditioning.

Am I saying that there was some overt, direct plan from ownership to get players to “juice up” to save the sport?

Of course not.

It smells a lot more like a conspiracy of silence, a wink-and-nod, don’t ask-don’t tell atmosphere that benefited the suits as well as the individual players’ career length.

It seems awlfully hard to believe that executives who have given their professional lives to understanding and studying a sport and the people who play it could be that blind to something that widespread.

Impossible, in fact.

There will be a lot of gnashing of teeth in the weeks to come and calls to cross out milestones and kick alleged offenders out of the Hall.

But for my two cents there is a lot of blame to go around in baseball, from the dugout straight up to the owner’s box, and you have to wonder if the needle fix for the sport in the 90’s could come back to do more harm than good to the game in the long run.

My oldest has moved past such childish things, her world now absorbed in skirts and lipstick, boots and boys, computer chats and MP3’s.

It’s a telling testament to the speed of our world these days that she is not yet eleven years old.

In my youngest, though, the sparkle still shines, and even though she envies the two years her sister has on her she has not yet abandoned her childhood in that headlong rush toward tweendom.

She still wants Santa to know what she really wants for Christmas; she still sets out not only milk and cookies but carrots as well lest the reindeer be left out hungry in the cold.

She still believes.

Number One passed the threshold not with an epiphany but with a casual aside, one day just mentioning to her mother her views on Christmas as yet one more piece of proof as to just how old and wise she has become.

But Number Two may darn well demand an explanation when her time comes as to whether she has been the unwitting victim of some cruel, vast conspiracy.

She may well look her dad right in the face and want to know,

“Dad, is there a Santa Claus?”

To which I will take a deep breath, look her square in those bright brown eyes and admit,

“You bet your stockings there is!”

You see, my dear, you may well have a tough time finding Santa on a map.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist.

You can’t find courage or love or pride on a map either.

Does that mean that they aren’t real?

Santa Claus exists in that moment when you hold the door open and smile for a total stranger.

Santa exists when something compels you to stop to drop a few coins in a red kettle.

You feel him in the first few notes of your favorite carol heard for the first time of the season.

You’ll find him in that excitement over the holidays because you know your family is going to come together to shut out of coldness and realness of the world and even for just one evening create a warmth you wish every day could contain.

And then there is that magical instant, with everyone prepared to exchange gifts, when your soul first grows to the point that your nervous excitement is not over what you may get but the look on someone else’s face for what you did for them?

Yes, kids there is a Santa Claus, and it is in that moment where he truly lives.

HEY! The Bremner Family wants to wish you and yours Happy Holidays and a bright and prosperous 2008!