Saturday, December 26, 2009

A Merry Mistletoe Story for You

Christmas is always full of fun news stories, as the various media outlets try to find something to fill their pages during the holiday slow down.

This year, the December blizzard made for oddly exciting news, so there were fewer of those fluff stories out there. I guess the white snow was fluffy enough.

The Washington Post health section, however, continued to report with their usual "be afraid, be very afraid" style, and devoted its section front page to "worst case scenario" stories about Christmas, complete with artistic renditions of Christmas trees catching on fire, innocent people being injured during violent gift opening sessions, and descriptions of egg nog food poisoning.

(In other sections, the editors also made a point of calling referring to the snowy weather forecast as "gory." I kept debating with friends whether these stories were meant to be amusing or alarming. It was hard to tell, but either way they did actually make me laugh.)

To counteract this odd alarmism, I bring you the following link from enature.com:

"Is Mistletoe REALLY the Kiss of Death?"
http://enature.com/articles/detail.asp?storyID=656

Happy Holidays everyone!

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