A guide to holiday do’s and don’ts
For the most part, Christmas sucks. So here are some ways to survive this wretched season.
Music
Do: Spend at least one day listening to the most ridiculous Christmas albums you can find.
Any more than one day, and you will develop an ostrich-egg-sized brain tumor, an inner ear defect and temporary paralysis, which will relegate you to the floor where you’ll be puking rivers of blood and fruit cake.
Any less than one day, and you miss out on a host of ridiculous Christmas albums. A favorite: Twisted Sister’s “A Twisted Christmas.
Last year, I saw their video for “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” sung to the tune of “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” It’s ridiculous on several levels. The video consists of old, fat men in costumes and makeup from 20 years ago trying to be androgynous. These creepers are playing a weird mixture of a tune that was popular the last time someone scored because they had a mullet and a Christmas carol. All in a Christmas-tree-and-stocking-rich environment.
The video ruined my life. It haunts my eternity. We were at Christmas Eve service, and I couldn’t stop laughing when we were singing “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.” All I could see was Dee Snyder tramping around the church in ridiculous eye makeup, kicking over people and chairs. Old ladies were looking at me in a very queer manner, but I didn’t bother to explain, because they simply wouldn’t have understood – too old to grasp such harsh realities.
Don’t: Listen to country Christmas songs.
No one needs some jackass hillbilly, or white-trash, hillbilly jackass – cough, cough, Toby Keith, I hate you – singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Silent Night,” “Rudolph,” or worst of all, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
Sorry kids, but if your residence – trailer, house, log cabin, what-have-you – has four or more rusty Chevys in the front yard, 18 mutts tied to the same tree in the backyard and one set of false teeth for 13 people to share, Santa probably isn’t coming to town. Santa is an elitist bastard who hates white trash, rednecks and those who don’t understand Dennis Miller’s stand-up routine.
Shopping
Do: Buy gifts for special people in your life, or those you’d like to see naked.
But since shopping is such a terrible experience, ensure that you will get some satisfaction out of the deal. Don’t buy anyone anything you can’t get something out of. Say I want a Nintendo Wii. To make sure that I get one, I’ll buy one for my girlfriend – who exists in this hypothetical scenario, but is imaginary in real life. She won’t really want it, so I can play it to my heart’s content.
This philosophy works particularly well with alcohol and CDs. I want a certain Strung Out CD, so I go ahead and buy it for my brother, knowing full well I’m going to take the real disc out, burn him a copy, seal the thing up and wrap it. Then, we both get a CD we want, and the possession of the original disc isn’t important because he’ll just put it on his mp3 player anyway.
With alcohol, you buy something you want to drink, give it to a friend and make sure you’re there when they drink it. After a few drinks, they’ll be too drunk to remember that it was their bottle and they’ll just let you drink most of it. This way, you drink at least half a bottle of whatever you bought.
Basically, a gift for someone else should be a gift to you, too. Selfishness and Christmas mix like gin and tonic.
Don’t: Shop early.
The people out Christmas shopping from the middle of August to mid-December are mostly likely semi-sedate, fruit-cake maniacs, totally whacked to oblivion with holiday spirit and cheer. These people are dangerous. They are toxic and should be locked in plastic candy cane prisons and constantly prodded with sharpened pine boughs.
You want to shop a week before Christmas, at the earliest – a couple days is a more realistic time frame. The people shopping later are in too big of a hurry to be cheery. They are often terribly spiteful, even to the point of outright rudeness, violent paranoia and ill temperament. People who are screaming at cashiers about the endless stream of Christmas noise are the ones you want to be associated with, not Prozac-addled holiday well-wishers.
An additional don’t: Get a girl you don’t know lingerie.
That’s just creepy. When it fits perfectly, it’s proof you’ve been secretly stalking them and stealing their undergarments. That right there is probably enough evidence to get your ass thrown in jail, or at least slapped with a fat restraining order.
And buying gifts for people you know aren’t buying them for you is in poor taste. People you buy the gift for feel sorry for not getting you something, and that creates a lot of undue pressure. Those found buying gifts and causing these circumstances should be shackled in the town square and spit on.
Festivities
Do: Drink and be merry.
I will always encourage the consumption of Christmasy alcoholic beverages. Drink some Southern Comfort and egg nog. Hell, you could even leave out the egg nog, I won’t tell.
Recently, I’ve found out if you let your blood alcohol content drop below .10, you are likely to catch a virus, the flu, cancer or worse – out of your drunken stupor, you are liable to catch the Christmas spirit, the full repercussions of which are currently unknown.
I’m not really sure what it means to be merry, actually. Since I don’t know, I’ll take it as this: Grow a beard, claim to be Santa Claus and try to score with some hot moms at malls. ‘Merry’ sounds romantic in origin, so my definition sounds close to the root of the word.
Don’t: Be someone’s buzz kill.
This is not a good time of the year to confront family members about their behaviors, whether it’s their drinking habits or definition of the word ‘merry.’
Stay off people’s back. There is no need to poke Uncle John about his illegal betting operation, or berate your Aunt Jane about her penchant for doing voodoo on strange men she’s slept with over the years.
These people are family, and an intervention during Christmas dinner won’t be productive. In fact, it’s probably a step toward having the electric turkey carver turned into an implement of death. Maybe suggest some of those things as New Year’s resolutions around Dec. 30.
Whatever you do, don’t forget the reason for the season: The constant replaying of “A Christmas Story.”
Dave Baker is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments and questions can be sent to da.bake@aggiemail.usu.edu.