VEN (Sacramento) —  Manager Trainee Bobby Meckler dodged a bullet last Friday evening, when a quick-thinking co-worker grabbed him by the  belt pulling him towards him, before the tipsy Mr Meckler could raise a handful of mistletoe above the head of a voluptuous self-identifying gender-neutral administrative assistant at an office Christmas party at the local Olive Garden.

“Two more seconds,” Mr Meckler told VEN‘s Senior Relationship Reporter Werther Eckhardt, “and my AutoZone career would have been over before it began! I sure was lucky!”

Dr Herman Reich, Professor of Inter-personal Relationships at  Oberlin College agrees.

“The days of kissing someone under the mistletoe are over.  In 20 states it is now a class B felony, and if you are carrying your own mistletoe and/or intoxicated you can be charged with a hate crime!”

All of this is very bad for the mistletoe industry, as sales are off by over 65% year-to-year.

“Five years ago I had almost 50 Mexicans harvesting for me, now I do it all myself,” Carlos Persada, a third-generation mistletoe farmer told VEN from his ladder Monday.

“We couldn’t keep up with the demand!

“Back then, my biggest problem was all them ilegales runnin’ around kissing each other all the time instead of working.  I used to have to chase after them with a big stick yelling No Mas! Volver al trabajo! Andale!

“Hell, I never thought I’d miss that!  Now thanks to Weinstein and all those Congressmen, those days are gone forever!

And with the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe dying out, the future looks bleak for farmers like Mr Persada.

“My sons are trying to interest the Chinese in mistletoe as an aphrodisiac — you know, mix it with some ground up rhino horn or a shark fin or some antler velvet — but we’re just not there yet.

“I guess if worse comes to worst we could always try growing spaghetti like they’re doing in Australia, but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Developing . . . .