To the editor:
Now in the sixth month, an advertising executive was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to see a virgin named Mary.
And having come in, the ad exec said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with Madison Avenue."
"Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. For 2,000 years from now, the celebration of his birth will save the profit margins of businesses throughout the western world."
Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold, wise retailers from the East riding Lexuses arrived in Jerusalem on Black Friday, saying, "Where is he who has been born King of Commerce? For we have seen his star over the shopping mall and have come to market him."
When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, so he gathered all the chief priests and scribes and red kettle bell-ringers and inquired of them where the financial Messiah was to be born.
So they read to him the words of the prophet Sam Walton of Arkansas:
"When the economy is slow,
And profit margins dip low,
Out of the cold and the snow,
A jolly fat man with face all aglow
Will cause a monetary blizzard to blow."
Now there were in the countryside shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their reindeer by night. And behold, a Wall Street mogul suddenly appeared before them, and the glory of a pre-holiday sale shone round them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the mogul said to them:
"Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy. For there is born to you this day in Bethlehem a King of Commerce, a profit and savior.
"And this will be the sign to you: You will find a babe in a finely crafted walnut manger, made in China, surrounded by elves stringing red, yellow, blue and green lights."
With that, the mogul vanished into heaven and the shepherds said to one another, "Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this blessing that has come to pass."
So they called to their reindeer — "Come now, Donner and Blitzen and Dancer and Prancer and Cupid and Comet and Rudolph and Dasher and Vixen." And off the shepherds flew through the starry night on their reindeer-driven sleigh to Bethlehem.
When they arrived, the wise retailers from the East were beside the manger presenting gifts to the newborn King of Commerce. There was a personal computer, a Blackberry, a PlayStation, an iPod and a cell phone.
Mary received a call on the cell from a fitness gym with a special Christmas deal to help her recover her pre-pregnancy physique. And Joseph and Mary and the marketable infant Messiah returned to Nazareth.
King Herod tried to be good and tried not to cry or to pout.
And the wise retailers drove East back to their plush corporate suites to invent more ways to profit from the birth of those poor peasants' Child than there are fish in the Sea of Galilee.
Stuart Charles Diamond
Gloucester
