Guide to Christmas

Sorry, other holidays. Christmas is the winner. It’s the undisputed heavyweight king shit of holidays. This is kind of a bummer, because not everybody celebrates it. In fact, most people don’t. But it’s still the undisputed heavyweight king shit of all holidays. Just like America is the undisputed heavyweight king shit of all countries.

America is not technically the best country. It’s not technically the most democratic country, or the most fair country, or the most populous country, or the country with the best food or the best health care system or the best schools or the best standard of living or the best… Well you get the idea. America is not the best at anything that’s really important. We’re the best at spending money on ridiculous shit we don’t need and owning guns and worshipping celebrities and making large tractors and jingoistic Rock n’ Roll and having billionaires and maybe we’re also the best at television. That’s about it.

Oh yeah, we’re also the best at being the best. Because we’re the undisputed heavyweight king shit of countries, and if you don’t like it, we’ve got an army of billionaires who will shoot with guns and run you over with an enormous wheat combine, playing “Sweet Home Alabama” at full blast on their way to buy a Segway because they saw on a reality TV show that Tom Selleck has one. We’re not going to apologize and we’re damn sure not going to learn how to speak your language, and this is a truth so defiantly inescapable we don’t even have to say it, we’ll just make sure you understand by marching en masse into your town and making you instantly dependant on all the money we’re spending there even if you hate us. And we’re bringing our fannypacks.

That’s America. And Christmas is like the America of holidays. Try to run. Try to hide. But if it’s Christmas, you’re damn well going to know about it. This isn’t one of those “Aw man, why the fuck is the post office closed on my day off?” holidays. It’s Christmas. King shit.

So like all holidays, it’s overrated. Holidays are overrated. All of them.

The real religious ones are also pretty overrated, but at least they’re trying pretty hard not to be. Rosh Hashanah, for example, is difficult to classify as “overrated.” If you’re not Jewish, you get the day off without quite knowing exactly why, and if you are Jewish, you pray a lot and blow a shofar in anticipation of the New Year to come. I think. Wikipedia told me you do that. Anyway, it’s tough to call this “overrated,” because it’s one of the most important Jewish religious holidays, and it’s also nice to get a day off from work without quite knowing why. Rosh Hashanah may be the only non-overrated holiday. There’s probably not a “Sorry I Missed Rosh Hashanah” chimpanzee with its hand over its face card available at Hallmark. So Rosh Hashanah gets a break.

But, in general, there’s a sort of abstract overratedness to any holiday, because days are days and only so much is possible within them. A day doesn’t know it’s supposed to be special. It can decide to be, like, really cloudy if it wants. Days don’t care.

Since Christmas is the king shit, you might think it’s the most overrated holiday. But it’s not, unless you don’t celebrate Christmas, in which case it’s the most overrated thing since the moon. If you do celebrate Christmas, and you get to spend it with your family, and you like your family, it’s only medium overrated. That’s a lot of ifs, actually. Christmas is pretty overrated.

But there are some undeniable plusses to it. Like if you get to spend it with your family and you like your family, then it’s pretty great. You get to walk around and buy presents and it’s cold and dark and miserable outside, but there’s a certain surprising kernel of unmisery to it because you have “Here Comes Santa Claus” stuck in your head and that song is retarded, and you can actually get away with just singing it out loud for a few bars in public, which is kind of great because how many times do you have “Sweet Jane” stuck in your head on a nice day and you want to sing it but don’t because it’s a faux pas for some reason? At least five times. But on Christmas you can do impromptu karaoke. And you can get an overpriced Christmas-flavored warm eggnog enema latte and wait for it in a huge Christmas-sized line full of a bunch of other people who are dickheads, but at least for now they’re Christmas dickheads. It’s nice-ish.

And then once you get to the parts that don’t involve being in public, you get to horse around and sneakily drink bourbon with your teenaged cousin and laugh as your gambling addict uncle-in-law gets accidentally punched in the balls by your three year old surprise change-of-life aunt. If you’re Catholic. If you’re Protestant, you get to do all the same stuff, except there’s no surprise change-of-life aunt and your ex-uncle-in-law is not invited and you’re not supposed to talk about him, so nobody gets hit in the balls, and you’re sneaking scotch instead of bourbon and your teenaged cousin doesn’t like the taste of it yet. But you’re still horsing around either way, and you’ve got at least the pleasant illusion of family being “the most important thing.”

So this means that for Christmas, to do things right, you’ve got to A. spend it with your family, and B. like your family, or at least pretend to long enough to get the right kind of family-liking drunk going.

If you can’t spend it with your own family, then try to spend it with somebody else’s family. It’s going to be weird if you do this. Just get ready for weirdness. Another family’s Christmas traditions will seem odd and arcane to you, and they will be less comfortable because of your presence, so their traditions will maybe even seem weird to them in that “exposure to outside observation” way. It’s like brushing your teeth left handed. It takes a lot more effort, produces an inferior result, and gives you a headache in the process. But at least your teeth won’t rot out of your head like they will if you don’t brush your teeth. Just so we’re clear, I’m talking about Christmas and families.

You should also floss.

Gifts are tricky. It’s nice to give a thoughtful gift, something the person didn’t know they wanted but now they know instantaneously that they’ll never live without it. But if you shoot for one of those gifts, you’re going to risk disaster. There’s nothing more humiliating than picking out the perfect gift for your Dad for an hour and a half and then seeing it still shrink-wrapped in his closet three years after you bought it for him. Sometimes it’s just better to get the unthoughtful gift that takes less time to figure out because you know they want it.

If you’re going to aim for potentially thoughtful, though, go for impractical too. There’s no sense in hedging your bets with an electric toothbrush. You don’t know what to get your Dad? Get him a platypus Beenie Baby and a box of ‘Nilla Wafers (he likes ‘Nilla Wafers) and a nonfiction book about spies. None of that shit is useful, but he’ll like it more than he’ll like that gum massager from Sharper Image. Nobody wants to massage their gums. All it does is remind you that one day you’re going to die.

If you’ve got a girlfriend, buy her a gift or gifts that total 10 dollars in value for every week you’ve been together until you’ve been together for 10 weeks, and then hold it at 100 bucks, and add 50 more for every year you’re together after that. Hope against hope that this will equal or surpass what she pays for your gift. If it doesn’t, you should surprise her with something by the end of the day, like an internet receipt for plane tickets to go somewhere. If you don’t feel like doing this, you should break up with her. If you want to do this but you don’t have the money, she should break up with you. If you’d estimate her gift to you to double your gift to her in value, pre-internet receipt for plane tickets, then you have to either break up with her or marry her before the next Christmas. It’s like a fun game that makes you want to die.

If under these rules you’re going to break up with her, you have to wait until after Valentine’s Day. Say mid-March. Sorry. But you shouldn’t be involved in a relationship if you can’t see it lasting past the Christmas-Valentines holiday date gamut. Plus, you have to wait until mid-March so you won’t technically be stealing her gift. By then you can tie it into a “burdened by gratitude” this-is-why-this-is-a-bad-relationship-for-me argument. But if you play that card, you have to be willing to give it back if she calls your bluff.

Your Mom just wants something that will keep her feet warm. Moms have cold feet.

Siblings get one gift you want them to have because you like it and you want them to be awesome like you are, and one gift you know they’ll like but you don’t like.

Grandmothers get something that smells nice or that involves an old person thing she uses everyday. Like a tissue box cozy or something like that.

Granddads get DVD’s of Westerns and old war movies. Maybe you can get them a book that reflects their outspoken political viewpoints if you’ve got that kind of Granddad. It may feel a little wrong to buy a Rush Limbaugh book, but think of how exasperated it’ll make your parents the next time they visit the guy and he’s freshly armed with all kinds of infuriating erroneous factoids that support his xenophobia, and when they ask him where the hell he came up with them, he says, “I read it in the book your own son bought me for Christmas.” And you get to just shrug and quietly giggle into the potato chip bowl. That’s entertainment!

Aunts and Uncles get Robin Williams movies. They’ve always liked Robin Williams for some reason that has to do with being an aunt or an uncle. It’s his unfunny uncle-y charisma.

Other Christmas rules:

-No decorations until after Thanksgiving.
-No voluntary Christmas music playing. It’s atmospheric. You’ll hear enough of it. Maybe if you’re drunk and/or wrapping presents you can play some Bing Crosby or that Phil Spector Christmas album. For non-Christmas months, there is a one song “get it, it’s not Christmas” gag limit.
-Christmas dress-up for work parties is funny and great. Thrift store yourself a super gay cable-knit/turtleneck sweater. It’s worth it for sillies, and it makes you feel less toxic over the fact that Barb is “really going all out this year” on the whole reindeer/elf front.
-Around this time of year, always tell people “YOU have a Scrooge up your butt” if they’re grumpy. I’m trying to get this started instead of “bah humbug.”
-Say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” People should be smart enough to know you’re not trying to get them to renounce their religion just because yours invented the king shit of all holidays.
-No pushing it on the mistletoe. You’re either getting a kiss or not.
-Christmas novelty things are pretty much a bad idea, unless they’re like the old/weird kind of Chinese robot Santas that are accidentally terrifying and you line up a bunch of them and it looks like some kind of pop culture apocalypse art installation. Otherwise just stick with solid color clothes and white lights and winter things.
-You only get to open one present on Christmas Eve, and it’s your Christmas Eve pajamas. The other presents you have to wait until Christmas morning to open or else you’ll turn into a communist.

Now you’re ready for Christmas.