The ABC’s OF CHRISTMAS
Alcohol– Face it, whether it be the vilest Kosher Wine, Grandmas 90 proof eggnog or just the familiar handle of Jack Daniels, you cannot get through this period without it. Besides, it’s the biggest holiday of the year, so you can get hammered with a minimum of repercussions. Raise a glass…to Baby Jesus.
Bonus–The Christmas Bonus has already been spent, long ago, and like Clark Griswold, your life will be in shambles in January if the money doesn’t come through. Yes, of course your 5 year old did not really need the latest iPhone, but after all its Christmas isn’t it? [Honorable Mention:Bacchanalia–A really cool word used in the movie “A Christmas Story“]
Church– Its Christmas Eve and somehow you have found yourself in a coat and tie, kneeling with hands clasped reverently in prayer, having already dutifully eaten the body of Jesus and sipped his sacred blood. I don’t know if it was guilt, or the glares and pious remarks from some of your religious relatives, but you are here. The pews are packed with hundreds of other guilty and sweating sinners. Remember to keep Christ’s bloody and mangled body in Christmas, its just the thing to do, your wretched soul depends on it.
Debt– Its coming. Crushing, debilitating, unforgiving, and enough to paralyze your finances well into next summer, but what can you do? The Black Friday Sirens have been blaring since well before Thanksgiving and you have followed the hordes of other suckers into Wal-Mart to get the goods. Its Christmas and in America, its what we do.
Eating– You will, like a starving gypsy at a refugee camp. You know you will overdo it and the rationalization with New Year’s Resolutions of dieting and exercise will ring as hollow and empty as your bank account in January.
Fruitcakes–To my knowledge, no one has ever eaten or tasted one of these. They are ancient symbols of the holiday season that are recycled year after year, often displayed, but never opened. If someone gives you a fruitcake, yes, it means they fucking hate you. There is also the 93 year old Fruit Cake Lady and she is hilarious.
Grandma got run over by a reindeer. This is an actual Christmas song. The only song worse is the one about buying the dying mother the shoes. Yes, I love Christmas music, and especially the banjo solos.
Hangover– You know its coming and probably at the most inopportune time. Last night, after you went through your 12-pack like a champ, it seemed like a pretty good idea to finish off your alcoholic binge with some Franzia Sweet Red out of a box. Today your body is spinning and reeling, and you will eat a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup with lots of hot sauce, right before going to the Mother In Laws for Christmas dinner. This behavior only draws sneers and scorn from your unsympathetic spouse. You try to survive the unrelenting waves of nausea as the MIL passes you her famous ambrosia. Eat up.
iPhone, iCloud, iPad, iChristmas, its all about the baby in the manger, iPROMISE!
Jammies. Yes, Christmas jammies. Check them out. I hate White People.
Kris Kringle, a.k.a Santa Claus- I’ve never understood why its perfectly OK to lie to your kids about Santa, only to break the news later that its just a myth. This is especially loony if you are a Christian and you maintain with a straight face that a Jewish Cosmic Zombie, who is his own father and whose mother was impregnated by a magical holy spirit will grant you immortality if you accept him as your master. If you don’t, you will spend eternity in hell because a woman who was made out of a rib ate an apple in a Magical Garden. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of this Zombie with a bunch of other ancient Norse myths thrown in for color and good measure. Makes perfect sense to me.
Lying-Don’t worry, its all right, in keeping with the season. Sure, Aunt Erma gave you the same hideous tie last year as well, but you tell her you love it. Unless she makes an escape to the grave, you WILL get another one next year. It’s the thought.
Money– If there is a common thread woven throughout Christmas, its certainly not the birth of a Savior, its the cold, hard cash. Marcus and Willie knew it, and so do you.
Nothingness– As the magical Christmas Day comes and goes, you know what is coming. The big letdown, the depression, the regret, not to mention the mess and the financial reality that will hit like a sledgehammer. There’s always football, but chances are that your Alma Mater has already fumbled itself into Playoff irrelevancy. Peggy Lee had it right when she sang those haunting words almost 45 years ago. They have never been more applicable than for the post-Christmas letdown.
Online Shopping– Its easy, its convenient and its fun. You are a genius as you smugly rationalize emptying half the inventory at Amazon, using exclusively your Discover Cash-Back bonus points. You have run your Discover balance up over 5 figures to accomplish this feat. The minimum payment lingers months and years after all the crap you bought is long broken, obsolete or sold at a carport sale. You hate yourself, and rightfully so.
Parties– Christmas Parties are a minefield, especially when associated with places of employment. Emboldened by that liquid courage, you are likely to vent a years worth of frustration in the direction where it can do the most damage. After the last wastebasket is overturned, the final brassiere popped, and another tasteless ethnic joke is told, the alcohol glow is fading. You know you have gone too far (again), and just hope that the powers above did not hear most of your idiotic ranting. You’ll find out soon enough.
Quaaludes– They haven’t existed for decades, but you pray to Santa and every other non-existent being that some will be in your stocking to get you through the next day. If they were good enough for Elvis, they are good enough for you.
Relatives– Are an unfortunate fact of life, and never are they more annoying than during the holidays. They have long ago de-friended you on Facebook because you didn’t agree that Obama was the Muslim Anti-Christ, yet you are somehow expected to let bygones be past and embrace these cement-headed Confederates in the spirit of the season. Any accidental friendliness on your part is taken as a concession as these cretins espouse the virtues of Palin, Nugent and Ted Cruz. You know its going to be a long night, so just listen and drink yourself into oblivion.
Snow– Yes, a White Christmas. This is probably, for most Americans, one of the most futile and unrealistic expectations ever, but let’s face it, Christmas is all about unrealized expectations, is it not? Most are more likely to be struck by lightning during a Yuletide thunderstorm, but we keep hoping, don’t we?
Twelve Days of Christmas– By Allan Sherman almost makes the non-stop caterwauling of Christmas music from before Thanksgiving till Christmas Day worthwhile…almost. You cannot avoid it, so again, embrace it.
Ultrasound Xmas Card– Your sister in law is pregnant with her SIXTH little gift from god, as if five of the no-necked monsters were not enough. So she proudly passes it around the dinner table as you are already about to choke on the ambrosia. God bless them, each and every one.
Visa-Mastercard, Discover, American Express. Without them we would not even be having this conversation. In the original Grinch Classic, the Whos demonstrated wonderfully that its not about the money and the loot, but we all know that’s a cruel lie.VISA is at $216.00 a share (EDIT: $257.30 A SHARE! 11/26/2014. Try $78.75 a share after a 4-1 split!, you should have bought…. 11/08/2015), up 50% in 2013 and up over 600% since 2010. Now, 11/28/2017 The price is $113.22, up over 1000% since 2010. Ho Ho Ho, and you’re paying for it.
War on Christmas– This is a state of mental duress that occurs inside of some Christian brains during the holiday season. These religiously impaired fundamentalists admire blood, guts, persecution, suffering and agony and wish to be martyred themselves. They somehow think that Atheists have some sinister plot to do away with Christmas in spite of overwhelming evidence of the Christmas spectacle, in all its glory, being even more pervasive than ever each year. The catalyst for the outrage and imagined War on Christmas is when someone innocently utters Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, and there is much mewling, whining and soreness of Christian butts.
Xmas– This term is yet another source of outrage among the Christmas purists who are convinced by Fox News that subversive, godless, gay sympathizing Communist Atheists are trying with all their resources to wrest the blessed Christmas Holiday away from much abused and persecuted Evangelicals.
Yuletide-A German religious festival stolen and absorbed by Christians for their modern day Christmas. There is also a Yule log. What this has to do with the birth of the son of god, I have no idea.
Zombie Apocalypse– Its coming, and if you don’t believe me its right there in the Bible, Matthew 27:51-53. Bring it on, you would almost welcome it after enduring yet another Christmas.
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TEAM RUTHLESS