It was a few days before Christmas in December of 2006. The trip I had to take back to my ancestral home in Kansas City, MO, went reasonably well, and I was ready to return to sunny Palm Springs.   And, thankfully be out of frozen overnight rain on the streets, and brown slush they called sidewalks. 

The Kansas City International Airport had turned a tacky red and green from its normal nondescript brushed aluminum and glass.  Loudspeakers from locations you couldn’t quite pinpoint blared annoying elevator renditions of my cherished childhood Christmas carols.  But the worst assault on the rushing passenger’s ears was the repeating loop of Burl Ives singing Holly Jolly Christmas, which the automated music equipment seemed to get stuck on.  

I was so desperate to get away from that nauseating song that I would have even swapped it in a heart beat for Little Drummer Boy.  And yes, I am well acquinted with how rat-a-tat-tat played over and over could stick in you brain and drive you nuts, but “Oh by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year” seemed much worse at the time.
      
Being someone who takes Christmas very seriously and being slightly tired (and irritated by one cold slush-soaked sock from a misstep getting out of the cab), I was not in a particularly good mood. (Almost a Scrooge) Going to check in my luggage which for some reason had become one suitcase with entirely new clothes (ones that I would never be able to use in the desert), I caught sight of hanging mistletoe. Not real mistletoe, but very cheap plastic with red paint on some of the rounder parts and green paint on some of the flatter and pointer parts, that could be taken for mistletoe only in a very Picasso sort of way.
      
With a considerable degree of irritation and nowhere else to vent it, I said to the American Airlines counter attendant, " Marge (which was the name on the badge pinned to the right side of her vest), even if we were married, I wouldn’t want to kiss you under such a ghastly mockery of mistletoe." 
       
She replied with a slightly officious tone obviously reading my name from the return ticket now in front of her, "Mr. Crump, look more closely at where the mistletoe is."
      
"Ok, I see that it's above the luggage scale which is the place you'd have to step forward for a kiss."
      
 "That's not why it's there." 
       
Sounding harsher than I wanted to, I said, "Ok, I give up Marge.  Why is it there?"
      
 "It's there so you can kiss your luggage good-bye."
 

At that moment with a playful wink, an ear to ear grin appeared on her face… and without being able to hold it back… on mine too!