How Verizon Stole Christmas

Verizon does something evil? Surely not our sweet, beatific megacorp! Yet that is the claim levied by the wicked town of Lonaconing, Maryland, whose annual Christmas lights were banned—for safety’s sake—by Verizon. Each year Lonaconing’s Christmas Light Decoration Committee would string their vine-like lights across the same poles used by Allegheny Power and Verizon to provide light and warmth to hundreds of poor children in the coal town.

”If a wire is hanging at 15 feet, a truck could snag it. It could snap a pole, and someone could get seriously injured,” Verizon spokeswoman Sandra Arnette said. ”We never said the town should not hang the lights. But safety is the first thing.”

The first thing is safety, Lonaconing, not your vile, pagan celebration! We would wish you coal in every stocking if we did not already imagine it would give your dwarvish children great joy to fondle each sooty treasure betwixt their stumpy mole fingers. And to put an inflatable Grinch balloon next to the Verizon office? Take your idolatry elsewhere, Lonaconing. We’ll have none of your craven imagery in this, the season of plastic, light-up Jesus.

All is not bright in old Md. coal town [WaPo / Boston Globe via Media Orchard]

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