Shellout falter

Roy Blount, Jr:

It is at this special time of the year, and especially of this extra-special year in particular, that we realize how urgent is our need to foster love and faith and brotherhood and... at any rate, faith, and by that I mean consumer confidence. When Americans, of all people, are afflicted with what the singer-songwriter Roger Miller called “shellout falter” — a reluctance to spend — then the whole world is liable, as Miller put it so well in his song “Dang Me,” to “lack $14 having 27 cents.”

Are we going to let it be said that all we had this Christmas to cheer was cheer itself? No! Let’s put the holly back in shopaholic, let’s get jingle-bullish. We owe it to ourselves, to the world and to future generations. The more presents we spring for now, the lighter the tax burden will be down the line.