Warning: You may want to consider not allowing young children to read this post.  Just sayin'.

I found out this week that my husband’s family never believed in Santa Claus growing up. That Jason and his siblings never experienced the magic of believing in an elderly man who broke in to your home in the middle of the night, ate all your cookies and drank all your milk, then left to case out the neighbors’ houses, saddens me. I have many happy memories of my sister and I being huddled together in the pre-dawn hours, wondering if this was the year Santa was going to slit a few throats during his midnight cookie raid. I can’t believe anyone would deprive their children of that!

We didn’t have a fireplace in our house, so I would often wonder how Santa was going to get in. What we did have was a furnace flue, which, if you followed it from the outside in (logically, the way Santa would be traveling) ended in a rather blistering wood stove. It was a mystery to me how Santa would be able to crawl out of that wood stove fast enough to avoid being roasted alive. Mom said it was magic. Dad would just give a hearty “ho-ho-ho, let’s see the fat boy get out of this mess!” and stoke the fire. These are the types of quality holiday scenes that have been with me my whole life, and Jason didn’t have any of that.  It breaks my heart to think of all he missed out on.

And I would be remiss not to mention Santa's eight reindeer, which in our house, calculated out to about 1200 pounds of meat. In the days leading up to Christmas, Dad would turn in to Bubba Blue from Forrest Gump, listing off all of the fantastic recipes he would prepare if he could just get a clean shot on Christmas Eve. Reindeer gumbo, reindeer marsala, reindeer stroganoff, reindeer stew...Dad was a natural chef. This resulted in years of therapy for my sister and I that Jason never had the joy of experiencing, poor kid.

I was one  of those kids who professed to believe in Santa long after my peers did. Sure, I was beaten up at recess quite a bit, and nobody wanted to sit with me at lunch time in high school. But the prospect of not believing was just too scary. By that point, I'd watched such holiday classics as You’d Better Watch Out (1980) and Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). Clearly, Santa was not someone to mess with, and if it meant that I was pelted with fruitcakes in the hallways every Christmas just because I refused to admit Santa wasn’t real, well, it was worth it. Fruitcake washes out pretty easily. Blood and entrails, not so much. This kind of peer interaction is exactly the kind of thing Jason and his siblings missed out on by not having a healthy fear of Santa in the first place.

Some parents like to scare their kids straight at the holidays by teaching them about Krampus, a vicious satyr who beats wicked children and eats them for dinner if they’ve been particularly naughty. I say, who needs Krampus when you’ve got Santa, master of breaking and entering, immune to the police, and capable of particularly brutal violence should a child stop believing? Sit the kids down for a screening of Santa’s Slay (2005) and you’ll never have yuletide behavioral problems again. Jason, Joy, and Bret missed out on all of that. I feel sorry for them, really.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I’m not crazy about The Year Without a Santa Claus, and as you know, I despise Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but the one holiday cartoon that I hate more than a root canal is Frosty The Snowman. Just hearing this self-centered, nihilistic boob’s voice gives me the dry heaves.  Sometimes the wet heaves, too.

This cartoon starts off with a bunch ably-challenged children being let out of school on Christmas Eve. I’m assuming they’re challenged, because one of them actually says “snow is good” when they’re let out of class, which is, of course, crazy. They decide to build a snowman, and one of these special kids wants to name their creation “Oatmeal,” which further proves my case that these kids are challenged. But I digress.

The magician who was hired to entertain these kids on the last day of school before winter break tosses out his hat, which lands on Frosty’s head, bringing him to life. The first thing he says is “Happy Birthday!” which would be nice if he was remembering what Christmas is actually celebrating. But no, the selfish sacrilegious snowball is talking about his own birthday, which he clearly feels is more important than, say, the birthday of the son of God. What a pompous egomaniac!

As soon as this numbskull is born, he immediately starts complaining that it is so hot he's melting. Hey, stupid. Maybe you should have thought about that before coming to life in a temperate climate.

Frosty leads a parade through the center of town, scaring the bejeepers out of the townspeople. One poor policeman is so alarmed by the walking, talking snow abomination that he swallows his own traffic whistle, causing (I am sure) permanent damage to the man's trachea.  Frosty (I am sure) doesn't care.

Frosty now reveals his true nature. Instead of buying a train ticket to the North Pole like a decent snowman, he kidnaps a little girl, Karen, and hops in to a refrigerated boxcar, which, might I remind you, is illegal. Of course, the little girl that is stuck freight-hopping with Frosty starts to suffer from hypothermia and frostbite. Good job, Frosty. He bullies some woodland creatures into making her a fire, but then the magician, who simply wants the hat Frosty stole from him back, blows out the fire. Apparently this scrawny magician has the lung capacity of the wolf from the Three Little Pigs, which I never would have guessed from looking at him.

The highlight of this nauseating cartoon is when Frosty and Karen find a greenhouse in the middle of the frozen tundra … as you do. Inside the greenhouse, Frosty melts to a puddle in what I like to think of as a slow, agonizing death. Then Santa comes along and, proving he is looooong overdue to retire, brings him back to life.  Really, Santa, what are you thinking?  Frosty just kidnapped a kid and tried to freeze her to death! Also, I was taught that only one being was ever able to die and then rise from the grave, but I believe we've already established that this cartoon was written by a bunch of atheists. And really, who needs Jesus when you've got a self-centered, parading snow terrorist to worship? 

The only nice thing that I can say about this cartoon is that at least it ends before Frosty can insist that Christmas be renamed in his honor. I say, bring on the sun!

My mother and sister asked me about six months ago if I wanted to join them in NYC this weekend to go shopping.  I politely declined. Then a few people at work organized a trip in to the city today.  I firmly declined.  Then I got an invitation in the mail to spend the day in Times Square.  I finally had to come out with the truth (and my apologies to my New York friends like Nick C. of Long Island, if this offends): I hate going to New York City.
My Myers-Briggs personality profile is ISTJ.  A quick Google search (go ahead, I'll wait)...will tell you that ISTJs are introverted, prefer quiet, peaceful living, and have a strong belief in following the rules.  Why on Earth would anyone put someone like that in a city with a thousand people per sidewalk square, where these mass hordes don't have a moment's hesitation before crossing the street when the giant red hand is clearly indicating DON'T WALK?  The very nature of the city upsets my sensibilities.  Plus, I had the unfortunate experience of going one time on garbage day, which hits my list as one of the single most unpleasant experiences of my life.
To be fair, I don't hate everything about New York City.  I'm a big fan of their sidewalk sales, and have been known to come home with a few new purses that I couldn't otherwise afford.  But my brother-in-law, who works in a law enforcement capacity, has implied that some of the items for sale on the streets of the city are not exactly legal.  Another thing about ISTJs?  We carry a lot of guilt.  In our new Coach bags.
Also, I'm a big Yankees fan. We have a Yankees shower curtain and Yankees blankets draped throughout the house. I have Yankees sneakers and a framed poster of Derek Jeter (sigh!)  My favorite thing to do in New York is take the train to that utopia of all that is right in baseball, Yankee Stadium, and have my picture taken next to the giant Mickey Mouse dressed in Yankees gear.  If there were a way to get there without dealing with the crowds on the subway and outside the stadium, life would be perfect. And again, I'm a big fan of those guys on the sidewalk, selling the jerseys and pennants for a third of the price of what you'd pay inside.  But I'll admit, I often have to take a Valium before making the pilgrimage to Yankee Stadium.  On the plus side, I rarely get upset on those rare occasions when my team loses, so I'm not going to knock the Valium thing.
Also, the Hershey store in Times Square is nice.  But I'm not going to spend my day elbowing my way through rude crowds and stepping over spit and urine on the sidewalks to get a giant Reese's peanut butter bar. 
Me, I prefer Boston.  Less people, more Kennedys, and clam chowder in a bread bowl at Quincy Market.  What more could a girl ask for?
So to my mother and sister, and everyone at work in the city today, I hope you are having a wonderful time as I type this snug in my bed with my Yankees comforter wrapped around me. While you're dodging insane cab drivers and attempting to wade through the sea of people to catch a glimpse of the tree in Rockefeller Center, would you be so kind as to pick me up a giant peanut butter bar? Thanks!

That’s right, it’s the time of year again when all the Christmas specials air, and I proceed to trash them, one by one. This week’s nauseating naus: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or, as I like to call it, Stuffy and Drill-Happy Find an Island of Losers.

I cannot stand this stop-action cartoon, which Jason is well aware of, which is why he has no right to complain when he puts it on and I heckle it. Rudolph is a dope. Hermie is a sicko. And Yukon Cornelius needs to set his standards a little higher when he’s picking his friends.

One of the things about this Christmas special that makes me want to surgically remove my own spine through my ears is Rudolph’s voice. His father makes him wear a fake nose, which makes him sound all stuffed up. He blows his own fake nose off (which, quite frankly, is disgusting) and then he sounds…stuffed up. Maybe he’d be invited to join in on those reindeer games if he’d just use a Kleenex and take an antihistamine once in a while. Nobody likes to hang out with the kid that has a snout full of boogers, Rudy.

The story's biggest problem is Hermie, who pretends he wants to be a dentist but who is really a sick psychopath that likes to torture animals. Why isn’t PETA protesting this cartoon yet? The rotten little bastard pulled out all of the Bumble’s teeth! Every last one! This poor polar pooh-bear is going to die slowly and miserably, starving to death as he tries to gum his food. The guy’s a carnivore, for goodness sake. Meat eaters kind of NEED their incisors to tear into their food, you twisted, horrible little goblin!

You can tell the scriptwriters were a little tired and bored with their own story when they thought up the Island of Misfit Toys. Here was a prime opportunity to come up with some really creative, terrible toys. A teddy bear stuffed with asbestos, maybe. Or a doll with used hypodermic needles for fingers.Something a little more rebellious than a Jack-in-the-Box named Charlie. I don’t know a kid alive that cares what the clown that pops up out of the box is called. Unless it’s Charlie Manson-in-a-Box. That might qualify as a misfit toy.
My point is, a perfectly adorable polka-dot elephant is NOT a misfit toy. However, a stupid malicious elf with a pair of pliers and a history of animal mutilation belongs on an island all by himself. Or on an island with Manson. Let’s give both of them a dentist’s drill and see who’s still standing after a few days!

We all know how this one ends. Santa is clearly too stupid to put running lights on his sled because apparently it’s the first time they’ve ever had bad weather on Christmas Eve, so Rudolph has to lead the sleigh around the world. I’m sure they put him at the very front of all the reindeer because Vixen didn’t want him sneezing all over her rump all night. Honestly, blow your nose already!

My version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer would go a little differently. For one thing, it would be a lot shorter. And it would end with a tender slice of grilled venison so succulent, it would melt in a Bumble’s mouth.