Do you believe in Layaway Santa?

Listen to Dave Ross Commentary: Do you believe in Layaway Santa?

The Christmas spirit is infectious — even for Sue Sylvester, the normally sadistic cheer coach on Glee:

“Christmas isn’t just a time when dwarves get jobs as Santa’s helpers and demeaning non-union commercials. No, Christmas is also a time to give back.”

And this year, it’s spawned the Layaway Santa —

“This week alone, this K-Mart has had customers come in and pay off $5,000 to $6,000 on others layaway tabs.”

People have been showing up at K-Marts paying off layaway bills. It started in Michigan and it’s spread to places like Omaha where a woman paid the bills of 50 people, and on the way out, handed out $50 bills – in memory of her late husband.

One shopper commented “it was like an angel fell out of the sky!”

But it wasn’t an angel that fell out of the sky. It was a really generous person. We have a lot of them in this country.

Because individually, we believe in the redistribution of wealth! We just don’t want the government doing it because then people come to expect it and pretty soon they’re spending their food stamps on escargot.

Of course, if this layaway Santa thing really caught on and angels paid everybody’s layaway bill, soon everybody would start putting stuff on Layaway.

So the key to acceptable generosity is to be unpredictable. Yes, we want every kid to get a toy, but we would never accept the idea of the government guaranteeing every kid gets a toy. You have to at least pretend that some kids might not.

Generosity always needs a Scrooge. Otherwise, it’s just welfare.

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