Word: holidayers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...then Santa sold out. More specifically, he sold the rights to his name and his holiday to a multinational business seeking to diversify. Amalgamated Widget Corporation got Santa's franchise for a song, because old Claus had no idea that his hobby was of any value, and besides, his doctors had been urging him for years to retire for his health. His job gave him ulcers. So Santa left Christmas behind to spend his last years breeding mutant strains of reindeer for high-speed sleigh competition, and Amalgamated Widget became The Santa Corporation...
There was also some political opposition to the corporation's holiday inflation, but the company made heavy contributions to the campaigns of any Exalted Poobahs who would support a longer Christmas. And The Santa Corporation also had friends in the executive office of the Grand High Hoozie of the Land--friends who could make things very difficult for any dissident groups opposing the extension of Christmas. The Hoozie used his palace guard to infiltrate pro-Noel organizations; one Hoozie aide had a placard hanging on his office wall bearing the inscription, "When you've got them by the Christmas balls...
...retained elves who specialized in festive law, and anyway, elf-scientists working at the corporation's North Pole South Building in one of the land's commercial centers had already advanced mystical sleigh technology beyond the rudimentary level old Claus had once achieved. In a last-ditch effort, wealthy holiday preservationists organized a Jolly Old Elf Legal Fund, but their $100-a-plate dinners helped only their consciences...
...Kwanza is the closest thing to a religious holiday we can agree on," the spokesman said...
That prospect does not worry Sadat too much. He believes that if the conference starts well, the Syrians and Palestinians-assuming a formula for their representation can be worked out-will show up later on. Washington, after top White House and State Department policymakers spent their Thanksgiving holiday digesting extensive reports by Ambassadors Hermann Eilts in Cairo and Samuel Lewis in Jerusalem, began to tinker with a new formula for a pre-Geneva "preparatory conference"-comprising Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, the U.S. and the Soviets, if Moscow wished-that would keep a comprehensive multilateral Geneva conference going until Syria...