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For the holidays, think Claus not Klaus


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December 17th, 2008 issue

The Lisbon Treaty has still not been ratified. President Václav Klaus is pulling off the rare trifecta of loud, boring and irrelevant.  Škoda Auto is cutting production, and Czech manufacturers from steel to glass are shedding jobs. The sun goes down at 3:30 p.m. Iraqis are throwing shoes at George W. Bush. Some New York investor named Madoff has just been arrested for running a $50 billion fraud scheme in the latest in a chain of financial scandals. There is still a war in Afghanistan, and, to put things mildly, the entire world economic order is collapsing.

Rarely does this page make clear-cut endorsements, whether they be political candidates, policy positions or favorite movies for the Academy Awards, but the time has come, and The Prague Post is officially endorsing: Christmas 2008 (plus Hanukkah, Ramadan and New Year’s Eve, while we’re at it).
“I think the first half of next year will be hard in the Czech Republic, and especially for Škoda,” says economic analyst Karel Potměšil on the pages of our Business section in this issue. “The second half of the year is still a question, but the whole year will be weak.”
Most, if not all economic experts, point to decreasing consumer confidence and a decline in sales during this year’s holiday season.
But another expert has a different view, saying: “The Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
Visiting Czech deputies and resident soldiers were attacked by missile fire Dec. 15 in Kandahar. The same day, the German conglomerate Siemens agreed to pay $1.3 billion in fines in Germany and the United States to staunch an ongoing bribery investigation.
If the news seems all bad, it might be because it is. The pages of every newspaper everywhere (including this one) continue to report on mounting doom and gloom, and the world begins to seem out of control, but in endorsing Christmas 2008, may we suggest that while eating your holiday dinner — be it fish soup, carp and potato salad; ham, eggnog and candy canes; or goose, brussels sprouts and figgy pudding — it’s time for putting down those papers or the cell phones or the credit card bill. All these crises will be there when you get back (unfortunately, it is true).   
While all the prognostications for 2009 are sounding dreary themselves, for a few days or hours things can sound different. Don’t believe us: Consult that aforementioned expert (a certain Dr. Seuss):   
“This sound wasn’t sad. Why, this sound sounded glad. Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, was singing without any presents at all. He hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming, it came. Somehow or other, it came just the same.”


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