Silver Bells vs "ka-ching"

Hey, your friend Kokopelli here will freely admit that he is a sentimental sap especially when it comes to Christmas. I watch It's a Wonderful Life every year along with several different versions of A Christmas Carol and I have most of A Charlie Brown Christmas memorized. So, maybe I'm reading too much into this but for me, hearing those incessant Salvation Army bells ringing as I walk from the parking to the department store is part of the Christmas experience. It goes along with eggnog and the smell of cinnamon and pine in your house.

But heaven forbid we let anything impede our customers from coming into our store and spending their money, right? Last year the Salvation Army collected $94 million dollars just from the red kettle brigade. Ten percent of that came for those in front of Target stores (in Sacramento, the proportion was over 20%) and now Target is denying them permission to collect there anymore. You would think that a company with such a generous community outreach program would really care about their fellow man helped by the Salvation Army as well? Of course, they don't get a tax break from money donated near their stores, only that donated by their stores.

This is crass, money-chasing commercialism directly stomping on one of the traditions of Christmas, a tradition that truly embodied the Yuletide motto of "Goodwill to men". And so it goes under the rule of a "compassionate conservative".