Guess what? The Christmas holidays are coming.
If you watch television, listen to the radio or go online, all the commercials and ads remind us every 1.7 seconds that we must spend at least $1.7 million on our family and friends this year or risk being bound at the ankles with holiday wrapping paper and thrown into the Schuylkill River.
Consequently, the only thing I can think about is Christmas. I couldn’t have a narrower focus even if I was looking through a straw.
Which brings me to reindeer.
Most folks think reindeer simply help fly Santa’s sleigh and only have to work one evening a year.
Not bad work if you can get it.
But apparently there’s an elite class of reindeer. While Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph are accruing frequent flier miles with Mr. Claus and enjoying the high life, some of their reindeer brethren simply are dead meat.
And winding up with grilled onions and mustard in a roll at hot dog stands in Anchorage, Alaska and elsewhere.
You, of course, can order reindeer hot dogs online as well as breakfast sausage with reindeer meat and even Polish sausage with reindeer meat.
Alaskan reindeer sausage apparently is best served with Coca Cola-caramelized onions riding in tandem.
Reindeer meat is too lean to hold together alone, so it is mixed with pork and beef and evidently guaranteed to delivering a pleasing, crunchy pop with every bite.
I guess all those Scrooges out there can’t claim to have had a bellyful of Christmas until they’ve noshed on a reindeer hot dog.
Never mind that eating too many hot dogs, with or without reindeer meat, could eliminate some Christmases at the back end of your life. They’re not exactly as healthy as kale.
Granted, anybody who eats kale as a holiday treat likely drinks only wheat germ juice at Christmas parties. Not the kind of guy who winds up wearing a lampshade or emoji mesh sunglasses.
