Christmas, a day off from shopping

The Christmas creep at the front end of the shopping season has come to mean that even Thanksgiving Day isn’t immune from rampant profiteering.

Remember? Only a few weeks ago, there were even a few who combined waiting in sale lines with eating their Thanksgiving dinner. Looks like the retailers aren’t even waiting for Black Friday to get the ink on their sales ledger running in the black.

It doesn’t seem like the trend has extended to Christmas Day. Maybe the shop owners know that people are going to want to wait until they’ve opened all their gifts before heading to the mall, whether to return them or buy more. That means day-after-Christmas bonanzas still will fall on the day after Christmas.

Of course, if someone figures out a way to make the tactic work, they’re going to try. But for now, at least one day of blessed relief.

Bring a little aloha back to Washington

By all accounts, President Barack Obama’s annual Christmas sojourn in Kailua will be cut short (they’ve been more and more abbreviated with each year of his presidency, owing to all the end-of-year high drama over budgetary matters).

It will be time for him — if not the first lady and daughters — to turn from the balmy Windward beach and head back to frosty Washington, D.C. The reason, of course, is the still unresolved end game for the "fiscal cliff" at the end of the year, when automatic tax hikes and spending cuts do a double whammy on the economy.

We hope he returns refreshed. Let’s listen for cues that he’s absorbed a dose of holiday aloha. Maybe he’ll start calling it the "fiscal pali," or invite John Boehner over for a little hooponopono.