I may technically still be on that very same crazy, cross-country Christmas vacation I first wrote about last week, but what can I say … I just couldn’t fathom waiting until I got back to share some of the immense travel wisdom that I’ve garnered along the road thus far!  We’ve driven over 1,600 miles, we’ve celebrated the holidays with two different families, we’ve cleaned up plenty of puppy byproducts along the way, and through it all, these are the things that I’ve learned…

• It’s of the utmost importance to take into consideration the physical size of the presents you buy for people before your travels, lest you want to ride for hours on end with packages on your lap…and under your feet…and pretty much all around your entire person!
• Law Enforcement Officials actually prefer that you to be able to see out of the majority of your car’s windows while moving at a high rate of speed down the interstate freeways of this fine nation.
• One should never underestimate the nostalgic power of the California Raisins Claymation Christmas Special after you’ve driven 14 hours straight and just need to unwind with a mug of hot chocolate and an old, childhood favorite!
• When you put four dogs together in one house, eventually cliques will form.  It’s in your best interest to remain on their “good side” if at all possible.
• No amount of preparations, including digital photos and video and even 3d holographic rendering, could’ve prepared an eager uncle for the overwhelming adorability that his new baby niece would be bursting with from her teensy fingers all the way down to her tiny, little toes…
• Despite having been away from home for over eight years, the snow in Northern Michigan is still very, very cold!
• From the looks of many rest areas across the country, a lot of people still litter.  This actually isn’t funny at all – I was just shocked to see that there are so many jerks out there who think littering is ok.
• Christmas cookies may not be the most nutritious road trip driving snack, but if they work for Santa Claus…
• Unwrapping huge presents is all well and fun, but you’ll still need a true Christmas miracle to fit them back in the car when all’s said and done.
• Even when visiting a strange place far, far away from home, you might be spoiling your puppy just a bit too much when you allow her to drink from your own glass of water…
• It’s a mother’s unspoken rule to ensure that no one leaves the dinner table at Christmastime without going up at least two pants sizes.
• Believe it or not, there are still things far worse than puppy pee for one to have to scrub out of their carpet.  We shall not speak of their names, but just know that they do exist and be grateful for that.
• Judging by the number of plush toys and board games and fruit snacks that I got for Christmas this year, the folks that came up with Angry Birds are doing just fine.
• No matter how ridiculously freezing it may be outside, there will always be crazy people still out in the streets shooting off fireworks at 3am on New Year’s Day.
• At the end of the day, the puppy that sleeps through an entire 14-hour car trip without so much as a single whimper or bark truly is the greatest gift of all!

What do you get when you take two adults, one puppy, and roughly 350 pounds of Christmas presents, pack them all up into a compact car, and set them loose on a wild, cross-country road trip spanning 12 states and who knows how many different weather conditions in a 10-day marathon Christmas vacation extravaganza?!

I don’t have any idea, either, but we’re sure gonna find out!

I suppose you could say that the adventure I just described spawns from one of the key perks/problems with living on the other side of the country away from the rest of your family – in those few instances when you actually do want to see them, you know – birthdays, holidays, interventions – you have to travel literally all the way across heaven and earth to actually get there!  Of course, to make matters even worse, it doesn’t help that my wife and I actually both live a gajillion miles away from our most immediate of relatives who guilt us for not seeing them on a regular basis, and so thus in all fairness one whirlwind trip to spend the holidays amongst family became two cyclones before we even stepped foot outside the door…

I also mentioned that we’ll be traveling with our lovable, omnivorous puppy who might very well eat us out of car and home in the event that we spend too long waiting to fill up gas!  I’ve heard before that traveling with a puppy is kind of like traveling with a baby, mind you with the one exception that at least a baby would have the courtesy of pooping in an actual diaper. We just recently got her used to “going outside” for the third time in the last six months, so already I’m looking forward to sending all of that progress back to square one by confusing the living daylights out of her with new doors to stand by and new places that we’d prefer her not to mark.

And lest we not forget the actual drive time itself – a teeth-clenching 3,000-mile jaunt through frozen parts unknown, with one family living kind of in the north by way of West Virginia and the other living undisputedly in the arctic tundras of the north way up in Michigan!  I can’t stress enough how much I haven’t missed in the slightest traversing the icy, snow-covered roads of my hometown since that day some eight years ago when I traded in my winter boots for a pair of flip-flops and a beach towel to move down to sunny Florida where, if it ever snows down here, we’ve got a lot bigger global issues than just trying to clear out the driveway in the morning!

But pack us all in our hybrid, fuel-efficient jalopy and away we’ll go, balancing presents on our laps and begging our puppy Cleo to “just hold it until the next rest area” as we trek our way across America in search of tidings and joy with those we hold most dear … mainly because they were the first to tolerate our bad jokes growing up, anyways.  It’s a journey one would only in their right mind make for family, and even then there had better be some decent holiday goodies waiting for us at the other end of this long and dusty trail!

A pilgrimage of epic proportions, only to be repeated every couple of years, and even then only if we still happen to be on speaking terms with the lot of them (or each other even!) by the time we manage to find our way back home again…

Remember, folks – Santa may visit all of those people’s houses in a single night, but at least he does it while they’re all asleep, and he certainly doesn’t bring any pets along with him for the ride!

I’ve never met a Christmas cookie I didn’t like.

Well, I guess that’s not technically true … I actually never really cared for those Russian Teacakes that the adults always used to like while I was growing up.  They were just so dry and bland and powdery, whereas a proper Christmas cookie should be sugary and moist and filled with holiday deliciousness at every bite!  It’s kind of hard for me to get excited about a cookie that not only crumbles and makes a giant mess on the counter when I try to sneak them at 3am, but then also leaves me battling a dry mouth that can only be cured by three and a half glasses of milk and a handful of real Christmas cookies to help get the god-awful taste of bleh out of my mouth…

But other than a few bad cookies, frosted Santas and gingerbread men are just as big a part of my holiday celebrations as the HoneyBaked Ham and the succulent, sweet and sour meatballs, and every other dish that makes my mouth water at the very thought of Christmastime growing near.  I guess that sort of explains my Weeble-like physique when you consider that all of my favorite parts of the holidays are the ones that you can eat, but now is not the time for lectures and guilt and crying over yet another year of unkept promises – that’s what New Year’s is for!

In the meantime, though, we’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of baking to do – armies of gingerbread men to do a jolly baker’s every bidding, blizzards of frosted snowflakes to fill the night sky with sugary delight, and even an Old Navy-sized collection of shortbread mittens of every shape and color … you know, because sometimes our bellies could use a little warming just as much as our fingers after a particularly blustery, cold winter day!  The kitchen may end up looking like a war zone itself after eight solid days of cookie baking intensity, with flour and sugar-dusted countertops to mark where countless pounds of dough fell to cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes, but sometimes the spoils of war justify the cost … especially when sprinkles are involved…

If you were to ask me right now what my Top 5 Favorite Christmas Cookies of All-Time are, after a bit of thought and in between bites, I’d probably cite something along the yummy lines of the following:

5. Chocolate Crinkles – you might not recognize the name, but you’d know ‘em if you saw ‘em … chocolate cookies that look like they’ve been squished, then dipped in powdered sugar to ensure a delicate sweetness straight to the core!

4. Fudge-Covered Oreos – I know, it kinda takes some of the fun out of it because technically you can just buy these at the store now, but there’s still nothing better than heating up some chocolate on the stovetop and dunking a few yourself because, well, you can put a lot more chocolate on them when you make them yourself!

3. Peanut Butter Blossoms – there are plenty of varieties, from the chocolate and cherry-flavored cookies that my wife made this year to even an extra awesome pumpkin flavor that is to die for, but sometimes just classic peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s Kiss crown is exactly what the cookie doctor ordered…

2. Gingerbread Men – the traditional holiday building material of so many houses and villages also exists in man form, and thankfully we won’t have any trouble catching him even if he does run, run, run as fast as he can!

1. Frosted Santa Cookies – don’t even bother unless you’re my Mom, for these incredible nostalgic treats from my childhood, with their fluffy, white beards and classic, red caps are like the embodiment of Christmastime bliss in every bite…

The point behind this whole column, with all of its tantalizing imagery and mouthwatering metaphor, is really pretty simple – Christmas cookies are delicious, and if you for some bizarre reason haven’t been eating one this whole time while you’ve been reading, now is the time for you to stand up, march out to that kitchen and immediately correct that oversight!  Allow my words here today to inspire your mind, body, and taste buds, because Christmastime is far too short to spend it not eating cookies…

Seriously, go now and let the sweet buttercreams and sugary sprinkles be with you!

2011 has certainly been an educational year for this puppy procuring parental unit, that’s for sure!

And if there’s one thing that my wife and I learned about our loony, yet lovable little terror on four paws, it’s simply that if sniff comes to smell, she can and will not hesitate to consume pretty much anything that she can get her greedy, little jaws around!  It’s a wonder you’re even reading this column here today … not that there’s necessarily any worry about her eating the entire Internet, mind you, but my computer, my desk, the very chair that I sit in as I pen this literary levity for your weekly enjoyment – those are all most certainly fair game for supplemental nutrition as far as Cleo the Wonder Pup is concerned…

Which leads us to this week’s dilemma because with Christmas rapidly approaching, I know that we have to come up with something for the newest little member of our clan to find under the tree, but what exactly do you get the puppy who would just as soon eat the tree itself if I hadn’t taken the necessary precautions to erect a special puppy-proof barrier around its base to keep her malicious mouth precariously at bay?!  Over the last couple of months, we’ve caught her munching on countless pairs of shoes, decorative pillows from the couch, and even parts of our bedroom wall – honestly, it’s been just about all we could do this holiday season to prevent her from eating Christmas altogether, much less think of anything that we’d voluntarily offer up to the fate of her mighty incisors and their well-documented reign of terror!

Pretty much anything “stuffed” is automatically out, on account of countless doggy toys whose innards have already been extracted brutally and without remorse in the arena that is our living room.  Chew toys are much in the same, because unlike some dogs who are more what you might consider “amused” by the magical squeakers buried within, instead I think Cleo sees them more as a challenge, taunting her bitterly with each squawk emitted from inside their fortresses of fabric or rubber.  A new bed?  Ha!  Do I even need to tell you what happened to the last two beds?!

But the more I think about it, you know, maybe it’s my approach itself that’s fundamentally flawed, considering that finding a gift that this puppy won’t eat is pretty much akin to finding a fresh snow outside my doorstep here in sunny Florida on Christmas morning!  Instead of going out of my way to find some indestructible, puppy-proof prize that likely by the laws of nature doesn’t actually even exist, perhaps the real key to finding the perfect gift for the puppy who eats everything is in giving her something that she can eat for days and days and days to her little heart’s content…

…something that has universal pooch appeal for dogs big and small…

…something so big that she won’t even be able to carry it around the house with her until she gets at least a week or two into it!

And besides, I suppose if in the worst case scenario by some bizarre turn of events Cleo doesn’t end up absolutely loving the comedically large, three-foot candy cane-shaped bone that that she’ll be discovering underneath the tree first thing on Christmas morning, as a fallback she can always just eat the equally-comedic gigantic box that it came in– she is still just a baby, you know…

That crisp smell in the air, those familiar tunes on the radio, the … err, official summons found in my mailbox…

They mean only one thing – as if scrambling to prepare for the bestest holiday of the year isn’t enough to keep a guy busy throughout the month of December, in addition yours truly is lucky enough to be called upon to fulfill his “civic duty” by means of a mandatory, non-negotiable call for jury duty!  Because really, who can think of any more festive way to get yourself in the Christmas spirit than by spending an afternoon sitting around a courthouse waiting room, bringing in a cool $15 per day with the off chance that you might get to judge someone’s fate much like no doubt Santa is already hard at work doing as we speak?!

Well actually, that’s what I assume happens because truth be told, I’ve never actually had jury duty before! I haven’t the foggiest idea quite how I’ve managed to avoid that hardened ice ball of justice this far – between a driver’s license, voter registration card, and even randomly just hanging around outside the courthouse to see “what’s up,” the powers that be have had plenty of opportunities to rob me of my daytime hours normally devoted to game shows and my stories, but nonetheless, I guess here we are and at this point I don’t necessarily think I’m out of line for saying … I don’t have a clue what to expect when I get there!

I mean, sure – a lot of people complain about jury duty and are even rumored to go to great lengths to scheme their way out of it, but at the same time … it’s Christmastime! With this time of year already filled with all of the joy and happiness that comes naturally from getting boatloads of presents and gorging ourselves on staggering volumes of fudge and candies and cookies, for all I know maybe the courts are just the festive and fun-loving type to get in on some of this holiday action, too, instead making jury duty a celebration to look forward to instead of something to fear to the point of actually considering removing my own gall bladder just to weasel my way out of it…

The more I think about it with visions of sugarplums simultaneously dancing in my head, all sorts of curiosities come to mind:

• Do they decorate the courthouse for the holidays, and if so, what song do they make the lights outside dance to?
• Will there be snacks, appetizers, or some sort of cookie exchange that I should whip up a quick batch of my famous Chocolate-Covered Gingerbread Mickeys in preparation for?
• When is the best time for me to go up and sit on the judge’s lap so that I can whisper in his ear what I want for Christmas?

And while we’re on the subject, just exactly what kinds of cases do jurors find themselves deliberating on this time of year, anyways???

Perhaps we’ll see one in which a vile grinch of a character attempts to steal Christmas, of all things, leaving all those around him with no desire to touch him even with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole … although for what it’s worth we do eventually learn that he’s managed to turn his act around in the end to the effect that his own tiny heart grew multiple sizes larger as a result of his lessons learned…

Or maybe instead we’ll be faced with a couple of repeat offenders who continue to terrorize a young boy during their annual burglary drives, despite being regularly bashed in the face with paint cans and set on fire and all sorts of other things that would lead most ordinary criminals to retire and take up less stressful occupations like air traffic controllers or TV/VCR repairmen…

Or possibly even some sort of legal proceeding in which the accused isn’t technically even guilty of breaking the law, per se, as much as he’s just kind of an overall jerk who hordes his money and doesn’t believe in paying benefits to his hard-working employees … that is, until he’s visited in the middle of the night by a trio of spectral spinsters looking to teach the old chap a lesson by forcing him to take a good, hard look at his penny-pinching, coal-hoarding grump of a life!

So many possibilities, merry and bright in store, I’m not sure that I’ll even be able to sleep a wink this weekend in wild anticipation of this very merry holiday jury duty that the State of Florida has been so generous to stuff my stocking with this glorious Christmas season.  Then again, if all else fails, I can always just crack open another carton of eggnog, huddle in close to the fire, and sing a few of my favorite courtroom carols to help pass the time…

While the criminals out there are spiteful,
our time in the courthouse is so delightful,
And since if we bail, Santa will know,
let us go, let us go, let us go…

(…to jury duty…)

Because nothing says “Happy Holidays!” like something that’s probably going to burn your kitchen down shortly after plugging it in…

I’ve never been a big fan of Black Friday, mainly because I don’t really have the knack for kick-boxing and to date there’s never been a toy or video game that I’d actually be willing to swim through a sea of angry shoppers just for the chance of scoring it at 65% off the retail price.  And I know, some of you out there differ from me – the die hard Black Friday shoppers that you are, eager and willing to stand in line for hours and claw your way through the electronics section to finish your Christmas shopping hundreds of dollars under budget and nearly a month before the last possible minute on Christmas Eve!

Just for the record, I think you’re all crazy, but for now let’s put that aside and instead focus on an entirely different concern that came to my attention as I was gingerly flipping through one retailer’s Black Friday Sales Bible the other day…

Simply put, it’s not really a “bargain” if it’s a cheap piece of crap that’s going to break 30 seconds after unwrapping it on Christmas morning.

I know, I know – the deals, they’re always so tempting, but do you really think that a waffle maker that costs less than a Big Mac from McDonald’s is capable of doing anything other than burning your kitchen to the ground in a fiery inferno, much less actually making waffles that somebody other than the dog would rightly consider eating?!  Think about it – at three dollars, the batter itself is going to cost you more than the actual appliance that you’re going to cook it in … even toaster-ready Eggo Waffles from your grocer’s freezer section will run you more on average than one of these bargain-brazen deathtraps, and really, this is only the tip of the iceberg for questionable quality with this year’s Black Friday Armageddon of Savings…

• Cotton Bath Towel – $1.28 – You know those extra-scratchy bath towels that hotels use to try to prevent you from stealing them?  You’ll wish you had…
• Vacuum Cleaner – $8.54 – My $100 vacuum cleaner doesn’t pick up the most mild of dirt and debris on our living room carpet, so…
• Ladies Watch – $5 – If this is your great idea for your wife’s gift under the tree, you might wanna just go ahead and also grab that $49 auto-inflating air mattress while you’re at it.
• Pogo Stick – $12 – I’ll admit, I was actually surprised to even see that pogo sticks still exist, however I’m not sure I’d trust the weight of a child to a $12 spring!
• Paper Guitar – $7 – Hell, why not just draw the kid a picture of a guitar on the back of a napkin from the food court while you’re at it, you cheapskate?!
• Digital Audio Player – $14 – It’s basically “just like an iPod,” except with way more disappointment come Christmas morning…

As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I feel that it’s my civic duty as resident humor columnist and Chief Waffle Enthusiast to remind everyone that not all that glitters is worth buying for 75% off, and in the end, even though a real waffle maker might cost you upwards of $25 or more, both the quality and reassurance of not having to keep the fire department on-call are gifts that your recipient will truly cherish for many bottles of maple syrup to come!

On the other hand, if you’re just the stubborn type who still finds yourself powerless to resist the smoldering allure that is the three dollar waffle maker, please do yourself a favor and also take a walk down aisle 12 before you checkout – I hear they’ve got a great deal on fire extinguishers for $6.49 that you seriously can’t afford to miss…

So this was a bit of a sad week, and not just because American Idol is back on the air again for yet another grueling season.  No, no – even far more tragic than thinking that anybody’s still going to watch that show without Simon, this week I experienced a little elimination round of my own, for this week I had to throw away my very first Christmas tree…

Well, the first Christmas tree that I bought here myself after moving to Florida seven years ago, anyways.  I’m pretty sure that my first first Christmas tree from 30 years ago is long gone by now, taken back by Mother Nature to decay into dirt and ground cover and nutrients for all sorts of other holiday trees and shrubberies.

That’s not nearly as likely to happen with this one though because, well frankly, it was fake and Mother Nature has very little use for metal and plastic in her great circle of life.  But still, it was a good tree while it lasted – easy to put together, not too big, and even easier to store away in a moderately sized box out in the garage between seasons.  A lot of Christmas tree purists out there complain that they can’t stand the sight of artificial trees, but unless they want to come over every two days to vacuum up needles and keep the thing watered on a regular basis, I think that artificial trees make for a marvelous holiday icon for the amount of effort involved!

Now what made this particular tree of mine unique was that instead of being your typical forest green in color as most trees artificial and actual tend to come, instead the one that I had picked out was in fact what I liked to refer to as an eye-catching snowy white, and although it did receive a small amount of criticism from those same purists who also apparently believe that Christmas trees should explicitly be green and only green, at the very least we could all agree that as a newly established resident here in the Sunshine State, it was the closest thing to a white Christmas that I was gonna get! Besides, it still decorated the same and Santa’s presents still fit underneath come Christmas morning just the same, so really, who am I to judge a tree by its color?

Well, maybe I shouldn’t say exactly that because in retrospect, I must admit that some seven years later I would’ve never expected that old Father Time would be so cruel to my beloved white Christmas tree over the years because it was in 2010 that I brought the box in from the garage and subsequently jumped back in horror to find that unless I had been recently dreaming of a yellow Christmas that particular year, my once beautiful, white tree was going to leave me quite disappointed and not nearly as merry and bright.  I mean, it was BAD, folks – kind of like a fresh, winter’s snow after the family dog has its way with it – and as much as I loved that old tree of mine, there was just no way that I could put that disgusting, yellow monstrosity up in our living room and actually admire it for the next month and a half!

Later that week we went out and bought a new tree that was decidedly not all old and musty and gross, and fortunately Christmas in the Sevener household went off without a hitch, but now that the holiday season is over and I’m finally remembering that I never actually got around to throwing the old tree away in the first place, the time has come to say goodbye to an old, admittedly dingy and dilapidated-looking friend who brought me many years of peace and love and of course, presents.  Old Whitey had a good run, and now I can only hope that in his newfound retirement he can continue to bring joy to others in some new way, like by not leaking harmful chemicals into the water table as he slowly decomposes at the city dump over the next couple of dozen years…

Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to close on a song that I put together in honor of my late Christmas tree – please feel free to sing along, as I think that you might recognize the verse.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
How yellow are your branches?
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Seriously, how did your branches get so yellow?!

You once were white like winter’s snow,
But now you’re gross, and you’ve got to go.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
How lovely were thy branches…

Show of hands – how many people still haven’t finished their Christmas shopping yet?

I mean, it is Christmas Eve … you know?! The clock’s a-ticking…

Then again, I suppose I don’t really have much room to talk – I did just finish my own shopping yesterday! Granted, it was a personal best for me this year, but I haven’t always been such an attentive holiday shopper, that’s for sure.  To say that I’ve been known to procrastinate from time to time is probably a bit of an understatement … in fact, there was even this one year when – believe it or not – I actually put off my Christmas shopping until only hours before the stroke of midnight on a day much like today!

The year was 2006.

In fact, it was the first year that I’d spend Christmas together with the girl who would eventually become my wife.  In hindsight, you’d think that might’ve been a tad more motivated to actually get all of my amazing presents under the tree in a more timely manner, but as they say, lazy habits die hard…

I don’t remember the exact distraction at the time – maybe I was a bit pre-occupied by the latest video game to grace my Playstation 2, or maybe I was just too busy watching episodes of The Office back in the day when the show was actually funny to want to leave the comforts of my own home and venture out into the general craziness that is the world of holiday shopping.  I mean, for what it’s worth, I don’t exactly blame myself for that – shopping during this time of year most certainly is crazy, from the insane crowds at the mall to the even more insane crowds outside in the parking lot when they get behind the wheel … you can see from the look in their eyes that they’ll stop at nothing – actual stop signs included! – to get to that next sale while the Zhu Zhu Pets are still hot!

If you ask me, you’d have to be crazy not to want to avoid all of that candy cane-induced chaos as long as humanly possible, but of course, as Christmas does unfortunately come but once a year, eventually there comes a time when a guy has to suck it up and get with the spirit of the season if he wants to avoid re-gifting old magazines and canned corn to the girl that he’s actually hoping will stick around at least through the foreseeable future.

For me, that time came right around 6:30pm the night of Christmas Eve.

And as you might expect, this is where our story gets interesting because as most retail workers will profess joyously in relief, 6:30pm on Christmas Eve is the time when the vast majority of stores have finally called it good and closed up shop until after Christmas, leaving an increasingly dwindling number of options for stragglers like myself as the evening progresses!  Aside from 7/11 and maybe ABC Liquor, neither of which was going to be particularly great for my relationship anyways, my options were hovering weakly between slim and none, and at this point it was going to take some quick thinking to get myself out of this Christmas Eve kerfuffle…

Like Mrs. Claus preparing breakfast for a hungry group of elves, I was going to have to scramble!

Fortunately, living here in Central Florida as I tend to gloat about to my frigid brethren of the north from time to time, I did have one alternative resource at my disposal which was admittedly a bit unorthodox, however as desperate times call for desperate measures, it was with panicking haste that I grabbed my shopping list and pointed the car towards the one place in Florida that was guaranteed to still be open for business at 6:30pm on Christmas Eve … Disney World.

Now of course, this wasn’t the first time that Mickey Mouse managed to come to my rescue, and considering that the following spring I would return to propose to that very same girlfriend with the help of a few of his friends, it certainly wouldn’t be the last, either … I suppose in retrospect it just makes sense that of the few places left for last-minute Christmas shopping, the most popular tourist destination in the country would still be alive and kicking in the final hours before Christmas itself…

And kickin’, it most certainly was! Whereas stores elsewhere were locked up tight and their parking lots had been long since deserted, the streets of Downtown Disney were bright and bustling with tourists partaking in all of the festivities that celebrating the holidays at Disney has to offer, from live music and dancing in the streets to snacking on all sorts of holiday treats to even some last-minute photo opportunities with the big S.Claus himself.  Granted, I had my own last-minute activities to partake in, so sidestepping all of the other merry fun as best I could, I slipped in and out of the massive crowds like a shadow in the brightly illuminated night, a man on a mission to save Christmas!

Some Mickey Mouse socks, a Pirates of the Caribbean beach towel, an Eeyore mug that depicted the tragedy of mornings without coffee – if my girlfriend hadn’t already been tested to see just exactly how much Disney she could tolerate in her life, Christmas morning was going to be it!  Well, actually it was surprisingly easy to find a variety of gifts that weren’t entirely Disney-related during my 11^th hour shopping quest, and by the time the clock struck midnight and even the Disney shops were getting ready to send patrons back to their hotels for the night, I was back in my car with a trunk load of goodies racing home to get them all wrapped and under the tree before my night-shift-working lady friend would return home in only a few hours.

It was indeed a race against the clock until the very end, but when morning came and all of those last-minute presents were ripped open just as happily as any, I knew that my holiday cheer had persevered once again.

Good, old-fashioned lazy holiday cheer…

Almost makes you want to put all of those gifts that you already bought off to the side and start all over again today, just for fun, doesn’t it?!  Well, no – that would be crazy, but for those few souls left in the crowd who might still be struggling to fulfill a last few items on wish lists big and small, know that there’s still time as long as you’ve still got plenty of holiday cheer to help push you through … and of course, at this point a bit of pixie dust certainly wouldn’t hurt, either!

1. hang 10,000 lights outside without blowing the neighborhood power grid
2. bake fourteen dozen Christmas cookies of varying shapes and sizes to give away to everyone that we’re too cheap to buy actual gifts for
3. buy, wrap, and mail out LEGOs for Timmy, a baby doll for Suzie, something sentimental for her parents and something unique for mine, that new AC/DC album for Grandma, and a whole slew of other presents … all in time to make the cut-off date set by the post office
4. decorate the tree, send out Christmas cards, hang stockings by the chimney with care, clean up the house, plan for a delicious holiday dinner, donate to the less fortunate, and of course, attend countless parties and social gatherings, bringing along the appropriate Secret Santa and/or White Elephant gifts for each and every one
5. ALSO, write a weekly humor column that will bring smiles and laughter to all of the good, little readers of Whoville…

All that, and I’m still expected to write, too?!

I mean, with everything that’s already going on to plan and prepare for the holidays, sometimes it seems impossible to even fathom trying to be creative amongst all of that shopping and running around and generic panicking that seems to be commonplace this time of year, and don’t worry – you’re certainly not going to hear me saying that it’s easy! So many of us, myself included, bust our butts all year long just to be able to look forward to Christmas when it comes around each December, only to then find ourselves in a whirlwind when it finally gets here trying to make all of our festivities and celebrations just as perfect as they can possibly be.  With so much to do already, you’d have to be crazy to think it’s possible to also knock-out a 600-word column on top of everything else … who has the time???

But while I can’t necessarily tell you the secret to finding more time during the holiday season because, well, I’d be a millionaire if I had that, what I can say is that probably more than any other time during the year, this is the absolute best time for me to practice that old writing mantra – “Write what you know.” If you’ve ever noticed that I pretty much tend to write nothing but holiday-related columns during this time of year, it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise for me to tell you that I absolutely love Christmastime! I love the decorations and the food and the presents and just the feeling of joy in the air around Christmas, and so if there’s any silver lining to be found during these crazy, chaotic times, it’s that I’ve yet to find myself with even an inkling of a shortage of ideas to write about during the holiday season.

If anything, this year in particular I actually caught myself having too many ideas for the number of columns that I’ll be writing this month!  Ask any writer – there are certainly worse problems to have…

So while time may most certainly be of the essence during the month of December when those sleigh bells are jingling and being funny on a weekly basis seems to be just another task lost in the overwhelming slush of holiday chaos, what makes it possible for me is simply knowing that pretty much around every turn, whether I’m putting up Christmas lights, or baking up a fresh batch of Chex Mix, or even just trying to decipher the etiquette behind returning a less than desirable Christmas gift, at least for once out of the entire year the writing ideas are flowing as freely as the spiked eggnog at an office Christmas party, and as any writer will gladly tell you, sometimes that can be the greatest gift of all!

…although for what it’s worth, there’s always the chance that one of those new ultra-thin MacBooks from Apple could have a positive impact on my creative process, too…

*hint hint*

So thanks again for reading – I hope to continue to peak your interest with more Behind the Process columns in 2011.  Happy Holidays!!!

- Scott

It probably comes as no surprise that despite an ailing economy and unfathomable unemployment rates across the nation, there’s really never been a better time to be a toy-making elf.

Think about it – in this crazy, technological age of Bluetooth this and wifi-enabled that, toys these days are more complicated than ever.  These new gadgets aren’t exactly something that just anyone could pound out in a couple of hours – would you be able to sit down at a workbench and just “make” an iPod Touch?!  I mean, give me a pocket knife and I could go out into the woods and whittle you a set of Lincoln Logs, but today’s modern Christmas gifts require a bit more assembly than the simple cut here, pound there trinkets and baubles of holidays long passed…

All of this fancy, new technology takes a team of highly skilled workers to build – it’s really an elf’s market for anyone who considers helping to create happiness among children all over the world to be an important value in the workplace.  Sure, computers and video games have been around for quite a while now … I still remember unwrapping my own 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System almost 25 years ago … but have you seen the graphics on a Playstation 3 running at full HD resolution?! To say that we’ve leaped forward a step or two since then would be an understatement akin to calling HoneyBaked Ham just an ok option for Christmas dinner!  And much like not just anybody can create a delicious, mouth-watering ham like HoneyBaked, not just anyone can build these highly-sophisticated entertainment devices for the good little boys and girls all around the globe, either!

Granted, I’m not exactly privy to what kinds of training that elves have to go through around the North Pole to ultimately become toy-makers, but I’ve got to imagine that it’s probably a pretty extensive selection process.  Maybe they all start out just wrapping gifts and sorting letters in the mail room and stuff, eventually working their way up through sleigh packing and reindeer maintenance (a stinky, but vital job, indeed!) before finally earning their place amongst the ranks of those who actually get to make stuff around the North Pole.  First would likely be candy, then cookies and other sweets, and then hopefully with enough hard work and dedication to the craft, the best and the brightest might someday find themselves transcending the leap from consumables over into the highly-coveted toy department where workbenches are filled day and night with hardworking elves building the very toys that will delight millions young and old come Christmas morning!

Sure, some cynics might argue that the hours are long and at the end of the day there’s one guy in a suit who takes all of the credit for your work, but something tells me that it’s not about recognition that keeps these dedicated elves showing up to work in subzero temperatures each and every morning.  For starters, I hear that the universal healthcare at the North Pole is outstanding, not to mention access to the latest gadgets and gizmos, plenty of Christmas cookies always laying around the workshop, and of course, the collective sound of gifts being unwrapped the world over on Christmas morning – that, along with an incredibly competitive benefits package and getting to work with the Santa Claus?!  I tell you, if I was three feet shorter and could actually stand being even somewhat remotely cold, it might be something to consider if this whole writing thing doesn’t work out!

Until then, though, I say we take a moment to express our kind thanks to the little people who actually make the things that bring smiles to our faces and truly make Christmas Day something worth being “good” for the other 364 days of the year.  Remember, if it wasn’t for these highly-devoted workbench warriors, you might actually have to pay full price at a store for that iPad you’ve had your eye on…