Is this what they meant when they sang "Deck the halls with old dead bodies"?

It was probably somewhere around 1972. I was nine years old that year, a student at James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School, and the first time I heard these spoof lyrics to the Christmas song "Deck the Halls," I almost fell off my little round orange seat at the cafeteria table.

Deck the halls with old dead bodies!
Fa la la la la, la la la la
'Tis the season to eat holly!
Fa la la la la, la la la la

And that's all I ever learned. But sometimes? When you're nine? That's enough humor to get the milk squirting out your nose and you'd better just stop there.

And whoever invented this really horrible Christmas ornament? They should have stopped BEFORE making this awful thing, LONG before. And believe me, not because this thing is humorous. Not just because the poetry is really terrible, but because Christmas is supposed to be a TIME OF JOY, people! Not a time to hang your head, sobbing over those who are no longer with us, but who are presumably enjoying a Christmas celebration ten thousand times more awesome up in heaven than the one we're having here, with the recession and all.

For those of you who didn't have the courage to click the link -- and who could blame you? -- I will tell you what the Christmas ornament it. It appears to be made out of pewter, in a Christmasy kind of design featuring two turtledoves, a fir tree, some holly and a couple of stars. There's a scroll at the top of the ornament that reads, and I am NOT KIDDING about this, just click on that link if you don't believe me, "Merry Christmas from Heaven."

Directly below that is a place to put a picture of your DEAD LOVED ONE.

Yes.

And then? Below that? There's a poem. Or, in this case, a pome. Written with a heavy lyrical hand and big on the rhyming, it reads, "I love you all dearly, Now don't shed a tear; I'm spending my Christmas with Jesus this year."

Great. Just great. As if the holidays aren't difficult enough for the bereaved, let's just make us a CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT to HANG ON THE TREE so that we'll be sure to WRING EVERY LAST BIT OF SORROW from this joyous holiday season every time we look across the living room and see it.

That'll put some jingle in your jolly, now won't it? Geez. What is this world coming to when the CHRISTIANS are assaulting the meaning of Christmas, which the last time I looked, was about the birth of hope as our Savior came into the world.