While I admit I was off to nursery school the fall that Sesame Street hit the airwaves, I did in fact see some of it and my favourite character was not the bird, the green guy in the can, or the mysterious, long unseen, snuffy. I was a Cookie Monster fan. I grew up, you can do the math from the launch of the show, in an era when kids were sent out to play and told to come home when the street lights came on. So you can imagine I was less than pleased to learn a few years back that Cookie was no longer allowed to eat cookies because they weren't good for him. Bah. I could use stronger language, but I was well brought up.
Then this week I discover that a woman has hacked out a few lines of "'Twas the night before Christmas", declared Santa to be a non-smoker, Photoshopped out his pipe, and published. Why? because Santa, who according to the poem is in fact an elf, might be influencing small minds to rush out and take up smoking. Reminds me of the people I once babysat for who gave up Santa because when you rearranged the letters it spelled Satan.
Let's let the old elf have his pipe. And if your kid wants to take up smoking, I suggest you look to other much more insidious influences.
C is for cookie, and that's good enough for me.
