Christmas isn't supposed to be about the gifts you get. It's supposed to be about the spirit of something-or-other, and family blah blah blah, and now that I think about it, I think some famous guy was born that day or something. So yeah, it's this magical time when people come together in love to share their joy and...some other stuff that sounds like it came straight out of a Hallmark card. And that's what it's about; that's all it's about.

But I got some really cool stuff this year! I got a Roomba, which hopefully will allow me to get drunk and eat ice cream with my bare hands while it does the vacuuming for me (because that is always what I'd rather be doing when I'm vacuuming). And I got Sirius satellite for my car and home, which hopefully will help me teach Jake all kinds of dirty words as we listen to Howard Stern together. And I got an iRiver .mp3 player to replace the one I lost a few months back, which will allow me to tune out the rest of the human population when I'm forced to be out among the heathens while shopping or working out at my gym. Plus I got gift certificates to several cool places, which will keep me from having to shoplift things I want, at least for awhile.

These things, of course, are just things. Not important at all, and not what Christmas is about. But they do help to make up for a few of the downsides of the holiday season:

Like candy canes. As candy goes, candy canes are at the very bottom of the barrel. They are not tasty, and barely qualify as candy at all. They're more like a breath mint than a treat. And yet all December long, every time I turn around I'm getting a candy cane shoved in my face along with a shout of "Merry Christmas!" There is nothing merry about these little striped mouthwash sticks.

And fruit cake. I know there are going to be a few of you freaks who disagree with me on the candy cane score, but not one among you has the nerve to pretend that fruit cake is edible, or that you don't promptly toss them in the trash when they are given to you. Know what fruit cake is good for? To take as a gag gift to a white elephant gift exchange, in the event that you can't get your hands on any chum.

And canned cranberry sauce. Adam Carolla claims the homemade stuff is good, although I've never once laid eyes on a homemade batch, since everyone in the world buys the canned stuff. And as I once told this crack junkie I sometimes fraternize with, cranberry sauce is disgusting and vile. What other food do you eat that's purple? And it's got that creepy jelly-like consistency, making it look like muppet phlegm. Somehow we as a society have been brainwashed into putting this crap on each and every holiday dinner table, all of us blithely ignoring the fact that it does, in fact, taste like can-shaped shit.

And poinsettas. These are the world's ugliest plants, and yet people hand them out cheerfully this time of year, smiling like they're giving you something worthwhile. I'd rather receive a can of cranberry muppet phlegm than one of those tacky neon red monstrosities.

And that, my friends, is why the gifts are important after all. I spend all month saying thank you for the candy canes I get shoved up my ass every hour on the hour by every person I come into contact with, pretending to admire the beauty of a lot of ugly red plants that look like they've been fertilized with nuclear waste, taking pains to discretely throw away the fruitcakes I'm given before they attract the cockroaches that are the only living things who enjoy eating them, and biting my tongue to refrain from speaking out against the cran-slime that is wiggled under my nose at the dinner table. The gifts make it all worthwhile.

And oh yeah, that family/love/religion stuff, too.

Labels: Holiday hell