An editorial by S.Rod

Every morning Mark and I wake up to the news on our clock radio. At 6:45am, it pops on and in fifteen minutes or so, I actually start listening. Today while brushing my teeth, I hear the story, “Is Santa a bad influence on children?” Immediately the clever headline piqued my interest. Damn, I’m trying to get ready here, but I stopped to listen anyway.

Basically, the acting U.S. Surgeon General feels that similar to athletes who work with children to promote healthy lifestyles, Santa should be no different in terms of athleticism. Did I hear that right? Santa is too FAT! WHAT? That is just silly!

Santa has already lost his pipe (an old man with a pipe, I’m sure every kid wants to emulate that!), he can’t have kids sit on his knee anymore (this one isn’t so bad), and he can’t say Merry Christmas (if you are going to see Santa in the first place, why would this be a problem?) or Ho Ho Ho (Santa does know if you have been naughty!) because it could offend people.

Now, they want to take away his “bowl full of jelly”. What is wrong with this world? The PC element is out of control. Come on, are kids paying attention to Santa’s tummy? I mean really, Santa is a once a year thing, and the kids just want the presents.

Begin Rant:

If the Surgeon General wants to decrease childhood obesity and promote healthy living then he should start with educating their parents. It’s the parents who are stuffing their kids full of prepackaged and fast food, they are letting them play video games for umpteen hours a day without any physical activity. Do kids even play outside anymore?

Everyone has gotten so lazy. Why can’t we take responsibility anymore? Why does it have to be the person on the TV’s fault, or the international icon for Christmas?

Another problem is that healthy meals, in addition to taking effort to make, are expensive in comparison to fast food. I was just thinking about the cost factor the other day while eating lunch. I had gotten a salad that cost me about $7 on Monday and yesterday I bought a double cheeseburger and large fries for $3. So, if I always eat cheeseburgers and fries I could eat lunch for at least 3 days on just $10. Isn’t that crazy!? We should try to find solutions for things like this, and not worry about Santa’s waistline.

End Rant…