If an alien from another planet were to drop in on America around December 22, he would find himself in another world. Not only would it be different from his own, but it would be substantially different from our own. A magical transformation comes over our country sometime in the late fall, right after Thanksgiving... or Halloween... or Labor Day. (Will the day ever come when the fireworks stands will begin selling Christmas trees, just to avoid the rush?)  Well, anyway, if such an alien were to attempt to report on the story behind all this December effort, it might go like this:
 

Mork, calling Orson. Mork, calling Orson. Hello, Orson? Orson, they have this amazing festival down here that everybody gets into, but especially the stores and shopping malls...  What's that?  Oh, well, they're sort of an enclosed walkway where you can go and meet your friends and smell cookies baking and buy ice cream cones to spill on the clothes in the stores. 

They're the same in every city... I think there's an enormous computer somewhere that spits them out and drops them in the suburbs, right in the middle of a sea of automobiles that can't move. They got them in there somehow, but there's no way to get in any more.
 

Oh yes, the festival.  Well, it's all about a little boy with a drum, and he's born in a sleigh, in some straw, right next to some chestnuts roasting on an open fire...
 

Yes, it is a bit dangerous, but its okay because he is guarded by this enormous fat man in a red suit named Round John Virgin, standing by a tree with a partridge it in, drinking something called Wassail... No I'm not exactly sure what it is, and nobody here can tell me. But there's a lady kneeling nearby with a light over her head, and a couple of sheep and a donkey and a camel and this really strange deer with a red electric nose, and a dog sleeping on top of his doghouse while a crotchety old man is hoisting this crippled boy on his shoulder who is holding a turkey by the neck and saying, "God bless us everyone!"
 

Yeah, the little boy says that, not the Turkey!... Well, anyway, after they sing a while they take all these packages and wrap them up in paper which they then take right off again, and the little kids play with the paper and the older kids say, "Is that all?" and the fathers sit in front of the picture-box and the mothers collapse on a chair.
 

The festival concludes sixty days later with an observance called "Visa Card Day" when everybody becomes really serious, religious and worshipful. Millions of people open envelopes and say, "My God!"
Yeah, its really a lot of fun. We ought to introduce it up there on Ork.
Well, that's all. NANU, NANU!
 

Larray Ballenger,                                                                   

Pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church - Fresno, California