Marry Merry Mary

It's All Happy

Ok, I’ll be honest. I’ve been working twelve or more hours a day, I may be a little delirious and most of my cognitive functions ceased days ago. This should be good.

It’s here, I’ve accepted that it’s here, and I’m happy it’s here. I’m talking about the official time of year to use the word “merry”. We don’t usually use the word merry a lot. Perhaps it’s different in your neck of the woods, but mine isn’t good enough for the likes of merry. We just say “happy”.

Happy is a good word, don’t get me wrong. It can cause a frown in a tense situation. Nobody wants to be reminded that it’s important to be happy while they’re pouring gasoline near an open flame, but otherwise happy is an excellent companion. It’s stood the test of time. Solid, dependable happy. Are you happy? No? Well, let’s fix that. We’re going to go out and try and make you happy.

This time of year we hit the breaks on happy. You’re now merry. Nobody says Happy Christmas. If they do, they’re put on some sort of watchlist and possibly prosecuted. It’s Merry Christmas. You can use it as a greeting or as a farewell. Some enthusiastic people use it for both during the same interaction. They are too happy.

I’m going to see if I can keep using the word merry throughout next year. Are you merry? No? Let’s fix that. We’re going to go out and try to make you merry. I might possibly get punched, but that’s the risk you take when doing trivial, yet interesting, research.

There’s just something more festive about the word merry. It’s an important time of year for many people. Family will be arriving soon. By god, Great Aunt Rudell from Purvis is coming. Let’s get out the good adjectives, shall we? The Oxford Dictionary defines merry as “cheerful and lively”, which also means happy but we wouldn’t dare use a word like happy to describe merry. Happy is for everyday use. Merry must be described with more upper crust adjectives.

Now let’s all be merry and look at some recent comics about retail, a job which will work you to death during this merry time and make you absurd. Absurd is another word for loopy, but I wouldn’t think of using loopy around merry. I’ll wait until the guests are gone and I’m happy.

April Bloom, as usual, is being highly optimistic here. Glitter never goes away. It just hangs around until it’s in season again.

The problem that I have with gift sets, and I always fall for this, is that they’re interesting. By golly, I would like a wallet, key chain, and pocket knife all in one snazzy box! Bought individually, these items may give me years of pleasureful use. Bought in a gift set they fall apart within months, maybe even days. The reason there are so many leftover gift sets is because we’ve bought them before.

I speak from experience here. There was a time when all you had to do to get antidepressants was to visit your doctor for a cut finger or a runny nose. I don’t know how it is today, but I don’t use them anymore. I subdue panic disorder by making comics.

Yes, I’ve been dealing with some mandatory overtime. It’s made me merrily absurd.

I love privacy laws. All you have to say is “doctor”. After that, it’s none of their business. After privacy laws, my favorite is “reasonable accommodation”. A chair is a reasonable accommodation if it doesn’t change the nature of the job, for instance. The only problem with that one is that many employers aren’t even vaguely familiar with the world reasonable.

I was working voluntary overtime and then they made it mandatory. It wasn’t so much fun after that. I went from feeling like a hero to just doing what I was told. The word mandatory hasn’t yet been changed into some new, feel-good term, but when it does it will be a great one to make fun of.

I did work at a book factory in California where employees slept between shifts. They had a whole section with cots during busy seasons. I didn’t do that, but it was actually a fun job and we got free books. It was a temp job that I got instead of filing for unemployment after being laid off. You can discover some interesting places that way. By interesting, I mean that it’s interesting because you know you’ll never be staying there long. I’ve had the best time at jobs that I knew I was leaving.

I liked this one only because it was fun drawing the guy in the background. Just a fun doodle.

The original version of this really confused a reader in England. In the second panel, Todd said “I don’t know what all they do.” It turned into quite the back and forth on Facebook. Several readers commented on how it made sense to them, even some English teachers. I explained that, in my area, it’s short for “I don’t know what all of the things are that they do.” I think the reader stopped reading the strip because of it. He was pretty irritated. He wound up arguing about it with people. I changed it to what he suggested because it got in the way of the joke. Still, I watch a lot of British TV and have managed to pick up on a variety of sayings that I didn’t initially understand, so I’m not sure what the big deal was. Oh well. At least I didn’t use “pitch in” when most of the country says “potluck”. That was another confusing experience several years ago.

I always think of going to individual stores as a fun expedition. Alas, not all shoppers do.