Have a Merry Christmas -- or don't!
Noel or LOL, enjoy the day off
You’ll be getting this on Jesus’ Birthday, so I won’t eat up too much of your time, which I hope is devoted to enjoyable things like wrapping or unwrapping presents or stealing bits of the Christmas feast out of the fridge or just loafing on what for most of us is a rare day off. (I managed, by hauling ass and filling the larder with copy, to get the whole week off from the God Damn Job, and am enjoying the opportunity to fantasize what life would be if the accursed shithole didn’t exist. Better, it would seem!)
I asked a friend recently if he celebrated Christmas and he said he was indifferent and his wife was “actively hostile” to it. And I have to say, I found that refreshing. Not that I’m against Christmas; most years I have at least tried to get in the spirit, and when I’ve had people in my life who loved Christmas it was nice to join them in the festivities.
But I can go the other way, too. I have a checkered history with the holiday; I had some very gloomy ones as a kid, and as an adult — the first Christmas I had to work, for instance; I was waiting tables in a shitty Upper East Side restaurant and not only did I miss my friends and family, I actually ripped the butt-seam of my pants and had to drape an apron over it, plus which they sent me to our sister restaurant to get some more turkey and when I got there they thought I was some bum trying to steal food. Then I got back to my slum apartment and my landlord was being stingy with the heat again, and I had to turn on the oven to keep warm. Not a holly jolly Christmas, that.
This year I don’t have those specific issues, but still I find myself short on Christmas spirit. I’m not gloomy; I just don’t watch enough regular TV to get the customary infusions of Yule-infused ads and Hallmark crap, and I don’t hang with Christmasy people, so there are not many extrinsic forces guiding me into alignment with the holiday.
And you know what? That’s cool. I don’t feel deprived. I’m happy for the people who genuinely revel in Christmas and seek to spread the cheer. And I’m happy that I get some extra free time with people I love. Everybody wins.
And then there are the assholes who have convinced themselves that Merry Christmas is something they were somehow kept from saying until Trump gave them permission, and now say it archly, as if it were a stunning comeback to an imagined insult. These schnooks don’t even remember how ancient, hoary, and tired their War on Christmas shtick is — and what’s worse, they no longer even feel compelled to pretend they’re defending Christmas because they revere the message of baby Jesus:
Anyone who spends Christmas Eve Day wondering why Jill Biden isn’t feeding white people instead of the YOU-know can shove a Festivus pole up his ass.
So if you celebrate, if you don’t celebrate, if you’re allergic or agnostic, I say unto you: Merry Wednesday!
Being a postal worker definitely gives one mixed feelings about Christmas! Long hours, stupid management, people sealing envelopes and packages with everything from bandaids to double-sided carpet tape, and glitter. So much fucking glitter! Anyway, warmest wishes, Roy.
I was at the grocery early yesterday morning. Figured I would get the last minutes out of the way early before the shitshow started. I had everything on my list except one item. I looked in the usual places and I even asked the Dairy department manager. No Luck.I called my wife.
"They are out of Roka Blue"
Roka Blue is a faux cheese substance made by Kraft. Along with another Kraft faux cheese substance, Olde English , and a block of cream cheese, Roka Blue is a key ingredient in a dish we refer to as "Cheese Ball" which is more of a "Mostly Cheese Substance(in spite of a big chunk of cream cheese)(what's in cream cheese anyway? Betcha there's no cream. I think it's just a block of pure cholesterol) Dip". I've been eating this stuff all my life and I've never seen it formed into a ball. It sits in a bowl and you dip your Triscuit or Wheat Thins. The Kraft cheese substances involved come in a small glass jar which is always saved because it is indestructable and makes makes a nice juice glass, My wife and I both grew up in homes where the "Cheese Ball" was a "Holiday Favorite" as the checkout magazines are want to call it. I gotta admit, in spite of all the dodgy ingredients, it's not entirely bad. I goes well with that pink chablis box wine the inlaws always have at their holiday soiree - three glasses of which make you look at them fondly and see them as family rather than the racist nazi christian fucks they really are. For some families, the phrase "Twelve Days of Christmas " refers to how long it will be before you finally poop after sucking down a pound and a half of "cheese ball" with a box of Triscuits and a half gallon of box wine while watching bad on Christmas Day.
"No Roka Blue" " None, I even asked"
Did you ask the right person?"
"I asked the dairy department manager"
"Is it even a dairy product?"
"Does anyone really know what time it is?"
"What?"
"Obscure reference. And the answer is no."
"No what?"
"No, I won't go check at Walmart. "
"Even if I call?"
" Not happening"
Pause
"It's like Jesus was never even born"
Somehow I think this explains how we've been married over 40 years.
We were cleaning out my Mom's place after she died and found a whole kitchen cupboard of little Kraft juice glasses. She also had a copy paper box full out in the garage.