In lieu of posting a new article this week, I’m going to link to two of my Christmas articles from last year that seemed to be pretty popular. If you’ve read them before, enjoy them again, if not, then it’s new to you!
Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Merry Christmas!!
Article 1: 10 Best/Worst Christmas Songs – This lists the 10 best and the 10 worst Christmas songs of all time as decided by me and me alone. A definitive list, you know.
Article 2: Festival of the Tree – This article describes the annual occurance of my wife and I putting together and stringing the lights on our tree. Without fail, this event every year describes the ultimate downfall of a marriage. Enjoy!
Santa Claus (1960) – This is, hands-down, one of the wackiest, most insane movies ever put to film. Don’t let the cute, twinkle eyed Santa on the poster fool you. In this movie Santa lives in a castle that sits on the clouds (!) with Merlin. Yes, THAT Merlin. He uses a giant telescope to spy on the children of Earth. He also has hundreds of kids stashed away in this castle building him toys. It’s like a Nike sweatshop in the clouds. The kids are all from different countries, and their workstations are labeled as such with signs saying “America”, “Jamaica”, “China”, etc (so, actually, it’s more like United Colors of Benetton in a Nike sweatshop). It’s surreal. And the main conflict of this movie? Santa vs the Devil. Yes, THAT Devil. All for the soul of a poor little girl named Lupita. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of this maniacal map of insanity. You can actually buy this DVD 
Holiday fruitcake. Yes, it’s that time once again for supermarkets to foist this holiday abomination on an American public that never really wants it in the first place. Seriously, who eats this crap? As far as I know, it’s only given away as gifts to other people. Then re-gifted again to more people. If no one wants it or eats it, why are people apparently buying it? Stores keep selling it, so people must be buying it, right?. And why is it called fruitcake? It’s not cake. It’s not fruit. It’s like eating silly putty mixed with colored pieces of plastic. Who is buying this stuff to warrant stores putting it out every year? It’s like the Bermuda Triangle or Sasquatch. We may never know the real answer.
This isn’t a Christmas item per se, and I may be behind the times, but I found these for the first time this week. Grapples. I know you want to say Grapple with a short a, but it’s pronounced Grape-L, with a long a, as in Grapes. The idea is that it’s an apple that tastes like a grape. Interesting idea, but my thoughts are that if I wanted grapes, I would have bought grapes. I can’t remember ever thinking, “Man, I really want grapes, but they are way too small to eat, dude. I want one giant grape the size of an apple.” I’ve never said that, even when I was high. Oh, and they are EXPENSIVE. Seriously. So, don’t waste your money. They don’t taste like grapes. Oh, they’ll try to lure you in with a siren song of grape smelling goodness, but it’s an empty promise that leads to nothing but disappointment and despair as they taste like apples. You’re essentially eating an apple bathed in grape flavored deodorant. But I’m not bitter about it or anything.
Hey, it’s the holidays, it’s time for soda companies to start mixing cranberries into all of their sodas to give them that Santa-red color that leaves you feeling tingly and safe inside like an old blanket. Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash shows up again this year after debuting at Christmas time last year. And he’s brought his brother, Sierra Mist Free. I don’t believe Sierra Mist Free recevied the Cranberry baptism last year, but I’m glad I found it this year. It’s REALLY good. I wish this was available all year. I still have half of a 12 pack of regular Sierra Mist Cranberry from last year. I’ve been savoring it in case they didn’t bring it back this year. Canada Dry also released their Cranberry Ginger Ale again. This can be found year-round in some places, but only in limited quantities. This is another good soda that really tastes good as a mixer. Seriously, try mixing in some Vodka or Hanger 1 Mandarin Blossom with these, especially the Sierra Mist. It will make your bells jingle and your Kris……kringle (haha, that was awesome).
OMG, I found out about this a week or two ago. I have been trying to find it ever since. Pomegranate infused 7-Up. How heavenly does that sound? And look how Christmas-y the logo is! Oh man, I’ll be stalking my local supermarkets waiting for this to show up. Me want Pomegranate 7-Up.
Candy Cane Pop Rocks, my friends. Not bad, not great, but not bad. it’s really just crunched up candy cane dust with some of the trademark pop rock crackle. I was slightly disappointed. Maybe I’ll save a pouch of this and dump it in a warm can of 7-Up Pomegranate and chug it. Then we’ll have a party……
Yes, it’s that time of year for companies to whore out the license for the old-school stop motion puppet movie, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Check out the elf that wanted to be a dentist, Yukon Cornelius, and the giant snow monster. You see these every year, kinda makes me sad how my childhood memories are bought and sold to the sweaty masses for peanuts. PEANUTS, PEOPLE!!!!
I love Christmas and along with that, I love Christmas songs. Especially the celebrity pop culture songs. Some of those Christmas songs can be so awful that you can’t believe how absolutely awesome they are…or, as I call it, abso-awful (I just made that word up). The rest of the Christmas songs are so heinous that you’ll claw out the inside of your ear with a rusty spoon to not have to hear them anymore. Here’s my personal countdown of the 10 Best and 10 Worst Christmas Songs of all time. I’ll also give you a little tidbit of why that song is where it is. You may look at these lists and be like, “Hey Pax, you are a ^$#$ genius, keep it up!” or you may look at it and say, “You are dead to me”. Either way, I’m still an incredibly sexy beast (You know it’s true. Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful).
First, we put on the digital music channel, 
So, we start again. Oh yes, people, I checked the strand this time. Daddy ain’t no fool. So, things are going good, for what feels like an hour and a half. WTF?! There is no way this strand is longer than the last strand. They are from the same box. Maybe doing the tree was a huge mistake today. Is that Feliz Navidad…AGAIN?! Does this digital music channel only have like 3 songs on its playlist?! COME ON!! Finally, the end of the strand. We plug it in to see the fruits of our labor. Crap in a hat. There’s a huge unlighted hole in the middle of the tree where Steph missed. I. WANT. TO. DIE. Maybe a glass of wine would help? Or a shotgun in my mouth?
We are finally getting to the bottom and I keep thinking we are done. I tell Steph, “…one more strand” like twenty times. We keep putting on lights and the bottom never gets any closer. It’s like the tree is a giant optical illusion. We are going to keep stringing up lights until we either run out of lights or we die, whichever comes first, and I’m betting on the latter. We finally finish the tree with a grand total of like 7 strands of lights. Seven strands of lights. SEVEN. We bought this tree like 3 or 4 years ago. It’s fake. We don’t water it, it doesn’t grow. Explain to me why the number of strands it takes to light this ^&%$# tree goes up every year. The first year we had the tree I swear it only took 3 strands of lights. I’ve bought boxes of lights every year to put on the tree. Where do the lights go?! Is there some kind of Phantom Zone in our tree? Another dimension that sucks up lights, never to be seen again? Maybe this dimension is nothing but Christmas lights and orphaned socks from our washing machine. 
Cavalcade of Awesome 