And what was the kid supposed to be learning exactly?

Today I was out and about, finishing up my Christmas shopping and in a burst of trying to be slightly less bitter toward the holiday I found myself listening to a station playing Christmas carols.

This was all well and good (if only marginally successful) until they played a song that related the following story - (I do not know the name of the song nor the Artist.  To be honest I don't particularly care on either front)

So this guy (the singer) is standing in line waiting to pay for Christmas presents when the kid in front of him tries to buy a pair of shoes.  Cue heartbreaking story about how they're 'just Momma's size' and he wants her to look pretty when she goes to 'meet Jesus tonight.'

Yes, apparently Momma has some sort of long term fatal illness and is not expected to last the night.

Which apparently prompted Daddy to drop the kid off unsupervised at the mall, which seems like questionable parenting to me, but what the Hell.  He probably just has other things on his mind, what with the spouse dying on Christmas Eve thing going on.  I would, however, like to have seen the conversation where he tells the attending physician that he's popping out from dying wife's bedside to drop junior off at the foodcourt.

I also enjoy the implication that as soon as Momma snuffs the candle (as they say) that the following exchange will occur-

MOMMA  

Yoo hoo!  Jesus!  I finally made it!

JESUS  

Hey there Betty Lou!  

It's great to see y... holy shit those are some GREAT shoes!

MOMMA 

I know, right??  I mean, I can't normally pull off a court heel

JESUS  

Oh NO, girlfriend*!  You are rocking that court heel!

*Yes, in my mind Jesus is played by a drag queen.  Go back and re-read Mark and tell me that doesn't make it more fun.

So anyway, the song goes on to tell how the kid tries to pay for the shoes with an assload of pennies, and of course he doesn't have enough.  And so he turns to the guy behind him in line (Our protagonist, for those following along) and asks, 'What am I gonna do?  Momma needs these shoes?'*

*No, what Momma needs is probably more along the lines of a new kidney, but again, what the Hell-  he's just a kid.  Kids get strange ideas stuck in their head.  Besides which, I think that there's a fair argument to be made that the whole story is crap, and that the kid is just working the whole situation and knows damn well that the sucker behind him is going to pay for the shoes if he spins him a sad enough story.  Which makes you wonder what he was actually planning to do with the shoes....

So of course our 1st person narrator chokes up, buys the shoes for the kid, and then makes the following reflection-

'I'm sure God sent the kid to me to remind me what Christmas is really about.'

Yes.

He assumes that God killed this kid's mom just to give him a warm holiday fuzzy.

See, now this is my problem with organized religion