The Mother of All Mergers for the Holidays

It has just been announced that the Christmas season will merge with Valentine’s Day in one of the greatest financial deals of all time. Originally, Christmas tried to merge with Hanukkah, but the Grand Rabbi of the North Pole turned it down.

So Santa Claus, the CEO of Christmas Inc., looked for another likely prospect and found one in Valentine’s Day.

“It’s a perfect fit,” Santa said. “We both deal in love. They are strong in greeting cards, and we are big in Barbie dolls.”

The price was $40 billion. North Pole Christmas executives said there would be a big cost savings when they laid off those who worked at Christmas and Valentine’s Day factories.

“We don’t need the number of reindeer that we have used in the past,” an executive vice president said. “Christmas will be a slimmer but more successful holiday, and our profits are expected to soar.”

The people at Valentine’s Day are not as happy. A Cupid doily-maker told me, “Everyone knows that Christmas gobbles up everything. Valentine’s Day will lose its meaning when the Christmas-makers start cutting back on expenses.

“Lovers are very sensitive people, and you can’t treat them as you would the customers at Toys R Us.”

A maker of chocolate truffles for candy boxes said, “The merger doesn’t make sense. Christmas appeals to greed--Valentine’s Day to affection and tenderness. We’re heart specialists. All Christmas thinks about is the bottom line.”

There is some question as to whether the Justice Department will permit the two holidays to merge. An antitrust attorney said, “I don’t know if we are talking about restraint of trade or not. The Christmas people would like to have Americans spend all their savings in December. The Valentine holiday people have only one big moment in February, and that is when everyone goes to Hallmark. The concern is that if Christmas owns Valentine’s Day, they could start marking up all the greeting cards, and with a monopoly on love it would no longer be dog eat dog.”

We asked Santa what holiday Christmas would merge with in case the Justice Department would not allow him to buy Valentine’s Day.

“We’d join up with Halloween. It’s become a real money-maker.”