And so this is Christmas…
Don’t worry – I’m not going to sing the whole song…as if I could remember all of the words with or without the aid of a few glasses of eggnog! All in the same, though, with Christmas easily being my all-time favorite holiday, it seemed only fitting that I put together a little tribute to the absolute best-est celebration in the world that doesn’t involve heavy-weight boxing for a trophy made entirely out of cheese. Confused yet? If not, don’t worry – it’ll kick in here right shortly…
Allow me to forewarn you because you’re in for quite a treat today. The text before you is very well possibly the most thorough breakdown of the holiday since A Garfield Christmas, and although I could never even attempt to compete with such a legend, I should tell you that my own interpretation is pretty damn good itself (…just don’t expect to see me sliding down the Christmas tree…)! I’ve taken the liberty of breaking it down into smaller, bite-sized morsels to ease the digestive process and make for a more relaxing read, but I’d be pretty surprised if you were able to pry yourself away from the screen until you read that last “Ho, Ho, Ho…” Pull up a chair for the Missus, make sure that your glass of eggnog is good and full, and kick back as I explain to you how the Christmas holiday is really supposed to be celebrated!
Santa Claus: The Myth Behind, errr, The Myth
The main man behind this whole celebration, St. Nicholas truly is an inspiration to us all! He works but a single night each year, bringing toys to literally millions and millions of children around the globe; for two or three months straight, his name and face are plastered on every television special, greeting card, and store window display from Tokyo all the way to, well, around the world and back to Tokyo, really! Kids confide their wildest dreams with him, their parents strive to be him…some even going so far as to rent a suit and everything, and for that very special time known as Christmas, he’s damn near the coolest person on the planet – hell, with that kind of popularity, I’d be jolly, too!
Of course, it’s argued by many that the Christmas holiday actually has nothing to do with Santa Claus, citing various religious ideologies and so forth, but that’s all very boring and not in the least bit entertaining, so instead let’s just all follow my own thought patterns and assume that the best winter holiday of them all focuses around being merry and bright, doing on to others, and most of all – getting presents – the granddaddy of all gift-givers being one Santa Claus himself! He’s fat, yet incredibly aerobic, he lives at the North Pole…at least during crunch time, and it’s been said that he keeps a gigantic list of who’s been naughty or nice, hence the infamous quote, “Santa knows where all the bad girls live…” Although I’ve yet to completely decipher his system for determining which list each of us belongs on (…I’m thinking it’s some sort of a point system, though…), I will say that he must either be very lenient or there must be a whole lotta kiddies misbehavin’ worse than I am – perhaps knocking off banks or beating up little, old ladies – because I’ve yet to walk away disappointed on Christmas morning! I don’t know if I ever want to meet some of these other kids…
For you history buffs, however, I just knew that you’d want more, so I did a little research that you can either enjoy or skip over – your choice! As it turns out, Santa Claus’ real identity is actually that of a thirty-six year-old Philippino man named Rizal…no wait, that’s not right at all, but that’s what you get for relying on the Internet as your main source for important information. Actually, there are several different explanations for the origin of Santa Claus, dependant on your position around the globe, but the most interesting that I came across was from a bit of Greek mythology (you know those crazy Greeks!), citing that St. Nicholas was also known as Hagios Nikolaos, Bishop of Myra. Originating in what would now be Turkey, his popularity grew into somewhat of a cult following, as he was known to make large and anonymous donations to those in need, which resulted in getting many, many churches and such named after him. Oddly enough, gifts were always distributed in his honor on December 6th, but then again, with all of the hunger and shelter and other problems they faced back then, making sure that the local joke-a-day desk calendar stayed up to date probably wasn’t at the top of their priorities!
Now that we’ve done our learning for the day, let me stress a couple more quick points before we move on here:
· Anyone who tells children that Santa isn’t real should have the crap kicked out of them immediately, whether by yourself or a delegate.
· If somebody inquires as to exactly how the big man in red is able to fly, deliver all those presents in a single night, or even fit them all into one bag, the answer is really quite simple – magic. How does he get into each of the houses? Well, believe it or not, those lock picking kits out of the back of Mad Magazine actually work a lot better than you’d think…
· Give the mall Santa a break when you get to the front of the line! Consider having to deal with a thousand crabby kids all day, for minimum wage, with a hangover – he doesn’t need any more crap from you.
· And last but certainly not least, don’t forget to leave milk and cookies out for Santa. Nobody that fat would be caught dead eating carrots and celery, so just follow the tradition and leave out the good stuff! Ladies, I’m sure you’ll find a better way to get back at your husbands than withholding the Oreos, anyways…
Interior Decorating
Before I go any further, I do feel the need to clarify one slight, teeny-tiny, little notion, and that would be the idea that decorating the house is a woman’s job, and for the most part, this is absolutely and utterly the divine truth! Nevertheless, there are two distinct times when it is ok for a man to pick-up the crepe paper and go to work, and one of those involves skulls and cauldrons and various instances of witches and mummies. With that in mind, once the Christmas season is over, don’t let me catch you waving those creative impulses around or you’re out of the club! ‘Nuff said.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, though, it’s time to really get down to business. The most important thing to keep in mind is to keep things relatively simple indoors – it’s on the outside that you’re really going to shine with the lighting display, and besides, too much tinsel and you’ll have people thinking that you’re gay…not that there’s anything wrong with that! All in the same, I’ve found that it’s increasingly difficult to score with the ladies if they’re already unsure about your sexuality, and that’s really our ultimate goal here, isn’t it?! The key to any decorating scheme is to be neat and noticeable, without smacking people upside the head altogether, so a little really does go a long way here…
Of course, it goes without saying that the Christmas tree is going to be the centerpiece of your display inside, so as far as I’m concerned you might as well go ahead and set that baby up first. Some may warn you that you’ll have nothing more than a gigantic pile of needles by the time Christmas actually comes around, but the real easy way around this little dilemma is simply to actually water the tree every once in a while!!! Just remember that your Christmas tree is still a living thing that needs water and sunlight (and love…), so covering those bases should be your most important commitments as far as the indoors is concerned.
Once you’ve got the tree itself up, though, the rest is actually pretty simple. A colorful centerpiece here, a bit of garland there (the real stuff, though, not that fake crap…and don’t even get me started on tinsel…), and you can proudly announce to the world that: you’re a man AND you’ve successfully decorated your house for Christmas! All that’s left to do now is hang the mistletoe (…because even the smoothest operations need a backup plan…), toss on A Very Chipmunk Christmas, and crack open a cold one, my friend, for the tough part is now behind you. Besides, everything that you’ve just done inside was actually a mere precursor for what we’re really looking forward to this year…
The True Measure of a Man is by the Luminescence of His Christmas Light Display
Yes, boys – this is where we really shine, now isn’t it? Christmas lighting is the one time out of the year to prove to the rest of the block, or even the rest of the city depending on your level of expertise, just how much holiday spirit you really have; how much jingle is in your bells; how much kris in your kringle. They say that by the height of a man’s Christmas tree, you can judge his, well, I think you know what I’m getting at here…
So basically what I’m trying to say is that unless you want to be considered less of a man by all of your neighbors, it’s your official duty to have the most impressive Christmas light display around. Baffled, befuddled, or bewildered? Well, don’t worry because although I might feel that same way about open-heart surgery, organized religion, and the opposite sex in general, if there’s one thing I know, it’s The Art of Christmas Lighting and Decorating, and I’m here to help! Grab a pencil, your credit card, and a thermos full of hot chocolate, boys, cause we’ve got some work to do!
Now before you start doing anything at all, you need to take an inventory of everything you’ve already got – Christmas lights, extension cords, wreaths and garlands – the works. It’s also a good idea to have the original electrical layout for your property handy, along with the Fire Marshall’s home phone number…you’ll be talking to him a lot over the next few days! After you’ve gone through and counted up everything that you already own, it’s time to take a look at the area you’ve got to work with and decide what exactly you’d like to do. Unfortunately for those of us living in the colder climates, this means actually getting up and going outside, hence the hot chocolate. Once outside, stand out in the street (…watch for traffic!) or at the end of your property and envision your future Christmas light display. Imagine the crisp snow falling lightly in front of thousands and thousands of twinkling lights, with Santa and his reindeer perched merrily atop the roof and carolers annoying the hell out of people in the distance. Also, try not to get hit by any cars as you do this…
Each person has his own specific techniques and styles when decorating for the holidays, so now is the time for you to develop your own. Some choose to use only clear lights on the outside of their house, reserving colors for indoors and on their Christmas tree. Others have favorite combinations of lights which suit our fancy, such as the common red and green, or white and blue…or orange and green if they still haven’t taken down their decorations from Halloween. And then there are those of us who simply choose to blind our audience with a completely random array of lights and colors and sound (yes, sound…we’ll get to it in a minute), effectively doubling or even tripling our electricity bills for a month or two, but nonetheless dazzling the eyes of the children, rubbing in the inferiority of the other men, and generally heightening the Christmas spirit for everyone around us. No, not all of us can fill the role (and the pants) of the mall Santa, but we most definitely make up for it with our Christmas lights!
Once you’ve decided on the perfect scheme for your establishment, a haunting concern will set in and convince you that you don’t have nearly enough lights to pull something like this off. Solution – time to go shopping! Oh, don’t hang your head in shame just yet, because this is guy shopping, taking you directly to the seasonal and hardware sections of every super store within a two-hour radius! (…you may laugh, but I’ve done it!) It doesn’t matter which one you start at because you’ll be making several trips to each of them before the job is done.
But before you go bargain hunting, it’s extremely important that you understand a bit about electrical circuits around your home!!! I’d repeat that, but I’m hoping that the boldness will be enough to make it sink in for you! Nothing sucks worse than having a totally rad lighting display which you can only turn on in sections because you didn’t plan ahead and ensure that there would be enough juice to power everything at once. As geeky as it might sound, my personal recommendation is to draw a map of your layout and actually chart the current numbers going to each area of the house or yard. “What numbers?” you ask. Well, pay attention because this is probably going to be the only educational moment you’ll find in this entire piece. If you read the actual box your lights come in, and maybe even the tiny writing on the tags that you typically just cut off and throw away, you’re going to find a number of technical terms – here’s what they mean to you:
Watts: This is how much power is actually consumed by an individual string of lights. Although it doesn’t affect how many strings you can put in a row, it will ultimately decide how high your electricity bill is going to be.
(Note: Your total system should total at least 10,000 watts, if you consider yourself a real man, that is…)
Amps: The number that is important to you, amps designate approximately how many strings you can daisy-chain without having them blow out on you. The maximum number is going to be found by examining the tiny fuse inside one of the strings and getting your number off of it – this will typically be something between 1.5 and 3 amps, depending on the style of lights. Next, add up the amperage requirements from each string until you get close to that number – as long as you don’t go over, you should be good to go!
Price: How much you paid for the lights, or at least were supposed to pay…but I didn’t really need to explain that one, did I?
Now that you’ve determined how many strings can be in a row, it’s time to determine how many your entire house can handle – not quite as easy of a task! Most people simply run an extension cord out of the garage, and that’s fine for a small display, but what we’re planning is going to take some serious power and requires a bit more work. The big ticket to consider is that your garage is probably controlled by one or maybe even two separate circuit breakers in the main box, so when you choose to just run another cord from a spare outlet, you need to keep track of what’s already running in the garage and make sure that you’re not going to run out of juice when, oh say, the heater kicks on or something. It’s an easy mistake to make – the first year I tried this myself, we couldn’t operate our garage door opener while the lights were on without blowing a fuse, so trial and error may very well be the best way to go here!
Nonetheless, if you’re going to do this right, the absolute best way to do it would be to simply install a completely separate circuit breaker for your various outdoor uses. Granted, this isn’t an easy task by any means and there’s a good chance that you could either kill yourself or at least end up with a really wild hairstyle, so don’t be an idiot – if you don’t know what you’re doing, ask a professional. You’ll most likely need to converse with the jockeys at your local hardware store anyways to get your hands on the right kind and size of circuit breaker and other tools you’ll need, so while you’re there, swallow the old pride, explain what you’d like to do, and get ready to take lots of notes! More likely than not, they’ll think it sounds pretty cool and might even have some suggestions that you wouldn’t have thought of, so it never hurts to ask…
So you’ve now got a dedicated plug ready and waiting outside – it’s time to get some extra supplies, and by extra, I mean as many as you can fit inside the trunk of your car (…if you have an SUV or a pickup, you’re one step ahead of the game!). When you first get to the store, you’re probably going to feel a little overwhelmed as your eyes scan the shelves from floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall with ideas and inspirations – that’s perfectly normal! Feel free to take a minute to calm your nerves, regain your composure, and visit the men’s room if need be. After you feel confident that you can continue, start examining all that they have to offer while continuing to visualize your desired outcome in your mind. Before long, ideas will just start popping into your head and chances are your cart will be overflowing in a matter of minutes!
Since this is your first trip, the most important thing to remember is to get enough lights to complete whichever section you’re working on at the time. If you’re still on the ball, it’s only October or so and you might think that nobody else will be out shopping for lights for another month or two, but in fact…there are several other guys there right now, aren’t there? These men are your enemies. They are the ones who will smile kindly at your display, then laugh diabolically as they plug their own in, blinding the neighborhood and claiming your manhood as their own – they’ll also be the ones who will get the last box of fluorescent blue icicle lights that you need to finish the garage – point blank, don’t let these guys out of your sight! What I’m trying to say is that shopping for Christmas lights requires a bit of foresight – being able to judge what the next neat and hip gimmick is going to be – and then buying enough so that you won’t come up short halfway through your project, only to make a trip to the store to find empty shelves.
That is, if you’re actually going to go along with the gimmicks in the first place…because some of them so far have kinda sucked and although I might’ve been gung-ho about them at the time, I’ve later realized that they’re simply more trouble than they’re worth. Like remember a few years ago when these icicle lights first started appearing in stores and everything just thought that they were the greatest? Well, I obviously have always prided myself on being a bit different than the rest of the crowd, so before the demand got too big, I picked up a few sets of ice blue icicle lights – enough to do the entire house. Sure, it looked great the first year, but not so much the following when I discovered that roughly half of the pile had become complete junk over the course of about ten months, so it’s important to keep in mind that the lights you’ll buy for $4 a box aren’t the greatest in the world and will wear out, unlike the ones used at the sweet exhibits down at Walt Disney World that cost a wee bit more! Nonetheless, last year I picked up a few rolls of these tube lights – basically a string of diodes contained within a rubber hose – and they’ve worked great for several years, so you just have to watch yourself and plan ahead before you slap down that gold card…
Believe it or not, now it’s time for you to make some moves of your own! You’ve got all of the tools, hopefully a bit of inspiration, and more importantly, a ton of electricity just waiting to get used. Just remember – leave no tree, bush, or shrubbery uncovered, no matter how crazy the neighbors, and your co-workers, and your family think you are, remember that you’re doing this for the children, and when in doubt, one or two extra strings might just have that little extra umph that you’re looking for! Now go forth and make me proud, my students! If I can’t see the glow from the freeway, you’re not trying hard enough…
P.S. I was kidding about that whole sound thing…please refrain from blasting The Twelve Days of Christmas throughout the entire month of December as part of your display! Yeah, it does seem kinda neat for the first fifteen minutes or so, but it’s not…
Christmas Cards: They Don’t Send Themselves Out…
And then there are Christmas cards… Ain’t it funny how everyone loves getting them, yet how many of us are really that anxious to get up off our asses and send some out ourselves? Oddly enough, the married guys are the ones who end up lucking out here, as more often than not they can pawn this one off on the wife and escape to the garage before she can say two words about the decision, but for the rest of us, we find ourselves stuck in a bit of a predicament:
a) Who do you like enough to bother sending a card to in the first place?
b) What do you want on them? (cartoons, winter-y photos, Santa – OK; “family photos,” poetry, naked babies – NOT OK)
c) When is it considered too late…or even too early…to send out cards?
d) Where in the hell do these people live, anyways? (…address what?)
e) Why isn’t there somebody that you can pay to do all of this crap for you?
f) How about a beer before getting started?
Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers to these questions…which might explain why I haven’t gotten a Christmas card myself for the last eight or nine years! If you’re as lazy as I am, you might want to try the concept of e-Cards, where you visit one of a number of sites hoping to make some holiday cash off you by e-mailing pretty pictures to your loved ones in lieu of an actual, physical card which they could place on their mantle. I’m told that they’re kinda tacky and lame, but hey, eCard is better than no card, am I right?
Or if you’re even lazier yet, simply ask all of your friends and family when you next see them if they liked your eCard (which you never actually even sent), and then when they tell you that they never got one, blame it on server problems and stupid Hotmail and the Internet in general…then quickly move on to a different topic, such as the war over in Iraq or how no two snowflakes are alike. This process works great for birthdays and anniversaries, too, or so I’m told…
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