Instead, please enjoy this lame substitute…
Merry Christmas from Ginger Santa!
The accompanying Christmas letter would be fairly short and simple as well, so I included it below:
Merry Christmas everyone! We had a baby this year. So, to sum up 2014, there was a lot of poop.
Love,
Aprill, Ryan and Riker
Sorry, guys, but brace yourselves. I am about to Pollyanna-out on all of you.
Maybe it’s because it’s my baby’s first Christmas or maybe it’s because I’m getting soft in my old age, but whatever the reason is, I am all about Christmas this year. I mean, I am downright excreting Christmas spirit out of my goddamn freaking pores.
I have to admit, it’s a nice change of pace. Last year I was super pregnant during the holidays, which naturally made me want to stab everyone in the face with a candy cane whenever I left the safe confines of my house.
And the year before that, well, I don’t exactly remember since all the electricity in my brain is currently being sucked up by the part that alerts me that my baby is trying to kill himself AGAIN by chewing on the cable cord. But I’m sure I was grouchy because the days leading up to Christmas are chaotic and crowded and my liquor store always runs out of the gallon-sized, industrial-strength eggnog I use as my holiday crutch.
But this year? I have Christmas music on constant rotation. I put up ALL the Christmas decorations, instead of just enough so that it wasn’t sad. I bought the good wrapping paper, instead of the $1.99 crap that is made from ancient cobwebs and glitter and falls apart if you happen to breathe too close to it.
And I’ve already bought most of my gifts instead of waiting until December 23, where I will inevitably sprain my eyeballs from all the eye-rolling I will do while waiting in the world’s largest line because the store thinks having one cash register open is a swell idea two days before Christmas.
But most amazing of all, I’m actually being nice. To STRANGERS. Stupid, dumb, ugly strangers who I normally hate. But now? It’s all opening doors for them and “oh no, after you,” and even “why no, those neon hot pink skintight leggings aren’t permanently ruining my eyesight at all.”
I don’t know if it will last. If next year, or even next week, I’ll regress back to my old “bah-humbug” ways. But I hope not. Because this whole “seeing the gallon of eggnog half-full” thing is actually kind of…wonderful.
I mean, do you know what this time of year would be without Christmas? It would just be “oh, hey everyone, winter has started and it’s going to suck so hard for the next four months.”
And with Christmas, instead of being depressed that night now starts at 3:30 p.m., you get “oh hey, we just finished lunch and it’s already dark enough to turn on the Christmas tree!” And instead of being miserable because you’re cold, you get to warm up the house with the baking of cookies and the cooking of giant hams that are bigger than your toddler (and then the eating of all the giant ham all in one sitting because calories don’t count in December). Not to mention, it’s the only time of the year where it’s socially acceptable to punch the person who brought the “healthy” cookies into work to share (ahem…Susan). And while you may think you’re sick of all that Christmas music, just keep in mind that Christmas is the temporary dam that keeps the Taylor Swift tidal wave at bay for a few weeks.
Christmas makes snow magical, instead of “the demon powder that makes me late to work” that it becomes in January. Christmas transforms decades-old bad animation into beloved holiday classics you actually look forward to watching. And most importantly, Christmas changes going to the liquor store at 9 a.m. on a Saturday for seventeen bottles of wine from “pathetic” to “totally understandable and necessary purchases.”
Not that Christmas doesn’t have its downsides. The mindless consumerism, the deep pit of debt, the never-ending flood of Facebook photos of that elf pooping Hershey kisses on top of cookies. Not to mention, all those helpful people who keep ruining “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by pointing out how rape-y it is.
But for all our bitching about the holiday season, the world would be a much darker place, quite literally, without Christmas. So I, for one, plan to soak up as much Christmas magic as I can.
Before January comes and slowly strangles all our souls with its cold, dead hands.
Posted in Humor
Tagged cartoon, funny, laptop, meme, starbucks, would you mind watching, writers at starbucks
Dear Santa,
Hiya, big guy. Remember me? Yes, yes, that Aprill with two L’s who “allegedly” set fire to Prancer when she drank too much eggnog and found that old stash of fireworks in the attic on Christmas Eve 2007.
(But may I remind you, the trial ended in a hung jury so no hard feelings, yeah?).
I’m writing this letter to you on behalf of my son, Riker, who due to circumstances beyond his control is unable to write you himself (those circumstances, of course, being that he is only 9-months-old and used the pen I gave him to whack our dog repeatedly on the head…heh, guess the ‘ol apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, now does it?).
Anyhoo, I can’t tell you how excited we are for Christmas this year. It’s Riker’s first one and we are planning on going all out this year. We even positioned our fake tree so that you can barely see the burn marks from two years ago (I should really not be allowed around fireworks). And our stockings have already been hung with care and copious amounts of duct tape.
But first things first, old man. Regarding the naughty or nice list…sigh. As we both know, my name has been written on the former in permanent marker since 1998 thanks to various incidents my lawyer has advised me not to publicly discuss pending current litigation in three Midwestern states (best road trip EVER though). However, I hope that you can rise above our personal rocky relationship and not let it affect my son. He’s been a very good boy this year, that yogurt-throwing incident involving that other baby in Starbucks notwithstanding.
In the hopes that you can find it in your heart this holiday season to let bygones be bygones, I have enclosed my baby’s Christmas list below:
The real one is by far his most treasured possession (besides that gross, wrinkled, fast food receipt he found at the bottom of my purse last Tuesday and refuses to let go of). Anytime he sees that tail, he immediately makes a beeline straight for it using that weird “I haven’t quite mastered crawling so instead I transport myself across the floor like a dying man in the desert who sees an oasis and is trying to get to it but only half his limbs work” move of his. However, seeing as how the tail is currently still attached to our dog, we all agree it would be in the best interest of Buffy’s mental health if Riker had his own, separate tail to play with.
You know, maybe just like a handful of them to put in his stocking.
I know, I know. What would a baby need an end table for? And the answer is, I have no bloody idea. All I know is that my son refuses to leave our current end table alone. But since ours is reserved space for Mommy’s coffee (and by that I obviously mean vodka poured into a coffee mug), he really needs his own.
Confession: This one is more for me. I figured it would be a good way to get him to stop shoving everything he finds on our fairly disgusting floors into his mouth but is also fun and full of whimsy. Also because I’m pretty sure using a straight-up muzzle on my baby is illegal.
Well, I guess that’s just about everything, Santa. Thanks for reading and again, my apologies to Prancer. I was glad to hear that at least some of his fur was able to grow back, albeit in small, sad patches (I’m sure he’ll be allowed to play those reindeer games again any day now…reindeer can be so cruel, can’t they?).
My love to the missus,
Aprill
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