Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - 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.

You notice how much more merrily that last sentence bounced along because I chose “spring” to express spending, instead of, say, “plunge,” and “lighter” instead of, say, “less staggering.” Words are important. So let’s say “bah, humbug” to b-words like bailout and bankrupt. Let’s digress from anything ending in -ession. Let’s entertain some new, upbeat holiday words.

Why not wake up tomorrow morning feeling consumptious? Rhymes with scrumptious, and approaches sumptuous. When we’re consumptious we’ve got that fire in the belly that’s burning a hole in our pocket. We’re going to be pumping bucks today, we’re going to open our hearts to goods and services, we’re going to take it upon ourselves to help America, and consequently the world, re-conomize. In so doing, we can personalize what is just about the only appealing phrase regarding the economy that has emerged this year: each of us can be his or her own stimulus package.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/opinion/23blount.html?th&emc=th