Bah Humbug!

There Goes Christmas!

Kids are forced to go play with cousins who they have rarely seen unless on an episode of the Twilight Zone, say hello to uncles reeking of alcohol wanting to know when you are going to be big enough to take them on, and aunts of all sizes with record breaking mascara-ed, inches long eyelashes and enough eye shadow to give any clown a run for their money. There are great grandparents with one foot in the grave that every relative must take a picture with that smell of death and the elderly. Christmas is the time of year for families and then remembering why it was that you only made the effort to see them once a year.

I myself was dragged away on many excursions to visit these relatives. At one relative's house my mom discretely told me not to eat the "chipped beef" that we were served covered in cat hair because she had seen it come from a can of dog food but thought my senile relative was about to feed the dog. One has to carefully choose the right amount of poisonous foods to eat or not carefully balancing death or avoiding offending the host when visiting relatives; foods that may have expired sometime during the Nixon presidency.

This is my great Auntie. We would visit her to receive our yearly back-rubs with her bunched arthritic fists while munching stale popcorn or striped hard ribbon candy glued together in one big conglomerate ball of color that you needed a five pound sledgehammer to break apart.

In her remaining years she was placed in a retirement home where we dutifully visited her. She was amazing at the piano and played for any and all ceremonies requested or not while at the home. At one such ceremony (a Christmas dinner) presents were being distributed purchased by the home for the residents as they were called by the announcer to the front. One elderly lady's name was called over and over with no one twitching a muscle or making a move towards the front. Suddenly my great Auntie bellowed at the top of her lungs, "Oh, move on already, she doesn't know whether it is night or day!"

Sometimes unfortunate kids are convinced they should spend many hours freezing in the cold singing Christmas carols to the neighborhood and herded around in youth groups with the promise of hot chocolate to the survivors. Inevitably one stop will be at the retirement home except this time there is no loved one to visit but a group of cranky seniors who don't know you from Adam who just want to get to bed or bingo. The look on this group of elderly folks' faces nicely sums up putting up with the screeching cracking pubescent voices mangling beloved carols.

You're a monster, Mr. Grinch
Your heart's an empty hole
Your brain is full of spiders, you have garlic in your soul
Mr. Gri-inch
I wouldn't touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole. - Dr. Suess' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Christmas Disasters

Christmas is cancelled

My son just asked me what the picture of the coal was. I replied that I was Christmas shopping for him.

The Naughty List

Bad Presents

Saving Christmas

"Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him." - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

A Very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season to You and Yours!