Christmas time is here again. Tis the season for celebrating old traditions. Around this blog, that means dusting off posts of Christmas past, posts that are staler than re-gifted fruitcake. Enjoy.
I wrote this post soon after I started this blog, and it’s still one of my favorites. I’m looking for producers to take it to Broadway. Anyone? Anyone?
The Walmart Christmas Musical
The entire play takes place in a Super Walmart on a Sunday afternoon during the busy, holiday shopping season. Here’s the story in a nutshell:
Our heroine is a young ingenue who looks almost exactly like me. She has been sprinkled with holiday cheer fairy-dust and sent on a quest in the Land of Walmart. She must find another strand of the same brand of lights she bought last year, to finish the string dangling 1 foot short of the bottom of her half-finished Christmas tree. Then she must get through the checkout and back to her car before the fairy dust wears off and she turns into a mean, bitchy old crone.
The show opened with Miley Cyrus’ spiritual performance of “I’d Rather Be Naughty, So $&%# You, Santa!” In honor of the season, she updated her usual bra-and-panty costume with a sprig of mistletoe, strategically placed. As for Miley’s dance routine, let’s just say I will never look at a humble candy-cane the same way again.
Next up, a mother softly crooned a simple ballad to the 5 ragged children gathered around her cart. She was imaginatively costumed in skin-tight black stretch pants and a leopard-print shirt cut low enough to reveal a pair of angels tattooed on the upper slopes of her absolutely ginormous, er, charms. The song was ” I TOLD You 20 Times!” and the chorus went something like this:
“I TOLD you 20 times you gotta be at least 8 years old before Santa will bring you “Call of Duty, Black Ops.” I’m going to have your daddy (Rodney, that guy who’s staying with us and kinda like your daddy) WHUP YOUR A** if you ask me ONE more time!”
I wasn’t the only one who left the show humming THAT moving tune.
The children’s choir almost stole the show with their rousing hit, “I Want THAT!” The lyric was not complicated – only “I Want THAT”, over and over – but the performance elevated the words to art. The volume of their childish cries built and built to a mighty crescendo. The number ended with the whole choir falling to the floor in the aisles, kicking its collective heels. Unforgettable.
The Greeter’s Gospel Choir’s a-Capella rendition of “Go Tell It On The Mountain (The Holidays Are Here)” had everyone clapping along. The reworked lyrics explained in an uplifting, catchy way how if the store employees said “Merry Christmas” at the door, it would be the same as forcing shoppers to join a Christian church and submit to full-immersion baptism just to get in the store. Entertaining and really thought provoking.
But the showstopper was the big production number finale.
I took a couple of dance classes as a kid, so I’m familiar with steps like the flap-ball-change. But I’ve never seen the moves the Walmart Shoppers Dance Troupe perfected for this extravaganza, a routine they call the Oblivious Shuffle.
Each shopper/dancer leaned on his or her cart and pushed it slowly, oh so slowly, back and forth across the stage. Their shuffling steps kept one shoe (or house slipper, as the case may be) on the floor at all times. The shuffling feet made a “shush, shush” sound that underscored the “squeak, squeak” of their unoiled cart wheels. The occasional crash of colliding carts played like cymbals in the composition.
About half of the dancers had cell phones pressed to their ears. One at a time, each burst into song with lyrics like “…so that witch my baby-daddy is with now said they couldn’t take the kids on Christmas Eve because they had to get her kids from her ex-baby-daddy’s, but we gotta go to my new baby-daddy’s grandmas then, so I told HER if you think I’m going to pick them up on HIS weekend, you can just tell that &%$#…” Their solos were incomprehensible, one-sided conversations when taken by themselves. Together, they wove a timeless Christmas story.
The dancers went through their movements with vacant, glassy stares that gave the illusion that they were totally unaware of everyone else around them.
Think of Night of the Living Dead as a ballet.
Meanwhile, the young ingenue wove her cart skillfully in and out of the shuffling throng, trying to get to the checkout. As she approached each register, the checker there turned her light to flash and shut down, crying “price check on 10″, “change needed on 5”, “register frozen on 8“ in a surprisingly harmonious medley. The audience held their breath when a determined shopper with 2 carts piled high cut in front of our heroine in the “15 items or less” lane, but there was no crash – it was all part of the show.
I don’t want to give away the ending in case you decide to see the show. Suffice it to say that as our ingenue trudged through the slushy parking lot trying to find her car at the end of the show, she looked a lot like the apple-wielding hag in Snow White.
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
Reading this again is a Christmas tradition for me, Peg. Much like It’s a Wonderful Life — only now named It’s a Strange and Wonderful Life
I will fall asleep on Christmas Eve to visions of Miley dancing in my head.
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Sorry about that, Elyse.
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Touching … truly touching. It’s heartwarming tales like this that make the season so magical. 🙂
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Brings a tear to your eye, eh?
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Oh gosh, we try to avoid Walmart as much as we can possibly resist despite those big, screaming LOW prices.
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Low cost vs soul sucking…it’s a real dilemma.
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Walmart may get a bad rap, but THE LOW PRICES and THE SELECTION!!! It’s all so wonderful!
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It’s a magical place.
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Priceless. Truly. I can see it all….!!!
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You’ve probably lived it, right?
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Not in such glorious technicolour or in its entirety, but in snatches. Which is what makes the full production such a blast! Wonderful.
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What I like best about Walmart here in Canadian winter-land is… nothing, really.
Love your story, though!
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I haven’t gone there once this Christmas, Margie, which to me means SUCCESS!
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Wally World is such an interesting place, you literally see it all
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It’s the best and worst of America captured in 260,000 square feet.
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WInter and Walmart…not to be confused with Winner in Walmart.
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Those two are mutually exclusive.
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Incidentally, it’s the longest running and the best selling musical in the US.
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The critics panned it, but the public loves it. Go figure.
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This play is destined to replace that time-worn and overrated “Nutcracker” spectacle.
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Nutcracker? Yesterday’s news.
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Haha. Love it. I think this might be why online shopping has become so popular. There’s no such thing as “People of Amazon.”
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People shopping on Amazon in their jammies and underwear isn’t that unusual. Unfortunately, neither is it unusual at Walmart. 😦
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My eyes My eyes. I am waiting will my grandchildren are old enough for admission! I am certain their parents will bar me from alone time with them if I take them before their tenth birthdays.
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We have to protect the children.
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That opening pic isn’t what I need at 7:17 a.m. That poor little girl standing on the cart doesn’t stand a chance, does she? If you look at the dance you describe as awesome performance art, you can actually kind of enjoy the parade.
Have you been on the People of Walmart blog-of-sadness? It features many of the folks you profile here. I laughed for a while and then I cried.
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I got that shot from People of Walmart 4 years ago. I should probably put credit in the caption, eh? That place is like a train wreck. The carnage is devastating to behold, but you can’t drag your eyes away from it.
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And you can get really cheap dry goods. I can turn a blind eye to anything short of murder for that.
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And that is why I don’t go to Walmart. Ha!
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And this is why I do!
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Exactly. Although I haven’t gone once this year, which is some kind of record.
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Life will never be boring with Walmart in business.
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No, it always gives us good material.
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