Christmas Parades are a Deadly Derangement of Culture and other Seasonal Asides-2

by Kane X. Faucher

But don't let me get bogged down in these details of myth. Back to the parade, which is in full swing. The usual parade elements include marching bands and floats that precede the coming of the Big Man. These floats are sponsored by local businesses that, in festive spirit, want to remind you that you ought to be shopping and increasing their numbers on NASDAQ. The marching bands are usually sponsored by local charities and religious groups that, in festive spirit, want to remind you that you've been a bit stingy on both donation and morality this year. In fact, the parade is the last commercial and moral push by the powers of the community to remind you of your neglect, and that you still have time before the tax year ends to make amends by means of wallet and mandatory Sunday attendance where religious patriarchs can bore you with preachy maunderings. This spectacle of poorly veiled advertising is an absolute joy to children who have yet to be completely jaded by endless hours of playing Counter-Strike. It is also perfectly timed to meet the public near-saturation point of all the usual Christmas signifiers: being inundated with nativity scenes and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer since the morning after Halloween, the tolerance of such things generally runs dry two to three weeks prior to the over-hyped day itself. For those already flagging in festive spirit and leaning into the humbuggery of the season, the parade also functions as a minor inspiration that it is indeed time to fell a synthetic pine for decoration, and that you ought to be participating in the greedy cash-nexus of buying gifts for people you can barely tolerate throughout the rest of the year.

Speaking of the season, the one real winner during this time are the liquor stores. Beyond the sudden swelling profusion of office parties where one has license to act inappropriately in drunkenly feeling up the secretary by the fax machine as a means of mediating all the sexual office politic tensions kept in reserve throughout the year, the Christmas season gives us all far too many reasons to tipple often and in great quantities. For the lonely, booze grants the ability to be a party-unto-one or to spend the entire duration in a hazy state of near-consciousness. For those who are not so fortunate to be alone, the other primary cause of drinking during the season of Yule: relatives. All the unbearable cousins, uncles, aunts, bitter curmudgeons with hearing aids who kvetch about their joints and speak graphically about their colon operations all descend upon your home to make life a tinsel-garlanded hell. Even connection by blood starts to become a flimsy excuse not to just go into the garage, start the car, and ventilate the entire house with carbon monoxide. If Uncle Bill describing his rectal surgery while your mouth is working on cranberry sauce is not enough to heighten a desire for booze, Aunt Midge's persistent "when are you going to get married / get a better job / stop purchasing the services of slatterns on a long whiskey bender?" should be cause enough to crack the Texas Mickey you have stored in the utility closet where you will invariably end up hiding in fetal position until they all go away. With absence, our reasoning softens, and we think we are up to seeing the relatives at least once a year, but how quickly we seem to forget the trauma of years past. All the reasons as to why we shouldn't "do this more often", as cousin Eb passive-aggressively intones for your guilty benefit come to the acute fore with the subtlety of a being smashed into the grill of a tricked-out pickup truck hurtling across icy roads with no brakes.

Beyond booze, I do have some very helpful suggestions for surviving the onset of relatives during the holiday season. If you are the unlucky soul who must host your blood relations there are a few things you can do to make things more bearable before you hurriedly ferry them out the door with your boot. For instance, if one of your pesky relatives starts criticizing your lifestyle to irk you, take the cold drink you have in hand and pour this down your pants. Also, make things surreptitiously uncomfortable by lowering the house temperature and claiming that you are having persistent problems with the furnace. If Aunt Mabel makes her tired old quip about the dryness of the turkey, don't rise to the occasion by carving her instead, but rather offer to freshen her drink with something soporific like a good table wine accented with crushed aspirin. Hide all musical instruments so that second cousin Bob, who has been steadily tilting the bottle, will not have occasion to increase the festive atmosphere with his tired old banjo antics. In fact, you should have complete control over the music. There's nothing like Schoenberg or John Cage to create a soundscape highly unseasonable and uncomfortable for all involved. Inevitably, because we are dealing with relatives, someone is going to start yelling or crying once they reach the comfort zone of the visit. Discourage this by engineering a disaster of your own. Suggestions include: setting the Christmas tree ablaze, "accidentally" hack off one of your fingers while cutting vegetables, or use peanut oil in one of the dishes you will serve a highly allergic relative. At all times, keep things unpleasantly awkward. If people start telling bad jokes, feign offense or that you don't understand the punch line so that time may be eaten up as they try to explain it. Do not make any inquiries into their personal lives, but do engage in a long monologue about your existential dread and fatigue, talking over anyone who interrupts. Relatives seem to like to kiss and hug, so to prevent this, announce in a clear and loud voice that you are in a highly communicable stage in your herpes—this also serves as a great conversation killer. You might also want to prepare in advance by driving around in the seediest part of town and inviting all the people of dubious character to your dinner…aged, over-dolled prostitutes and toothless schizophrenic rubbies are enough to throw the entire social bouquet into disarray, and people of this nature are exactly like your relatives but without careers or two-door garages. You may also wish to play up the scandal of your lifestyle by offering hard drugs in lieu of humbug candies or cashews. At dinner, eschew the humdrum turkey feast by serving obscure ethnic food instead. In fact, we should now break to consider effective holiday meal etiquette.

You've been entrusted to cook Christmas dinner this year which is a culinary stretch for your impaired likes when you are generally accustomed in the glory of bachelorhood to nuke burritos and eat ravioli out of a can over the sink. Knowing that your relatives would not be amused if you just ordered Chinese, you are obliged to make a feast that satisfies the banal palates of festive repetition. The first thing you need to purchase is a turkey. Never mind that you've never used any other cooking appliance than the microwave (which is not the ideal appliance to cook a turkey in). You need to track down some large deep-dish pan. Failing that, you can always use a drawer from your filing cabinet. Place the turkey in the unit, and place in the oven. Turn your oven to whatever turns up from three throws of a six-sided dice and let it cook in there from morning until evening, occasionally using something called a baste to squirt fluid on or remove fluid from it. You may wish to "stuff" the turkey beforehand. In that case, defrost the turkey first since you'll only break your hand trying to ram up the dead bird's frozen ass. This process is messy since you are removing a variety of organs and other gooey bric-a-brac (I find using dish gloves best). In the place of the gore, ram some cracker crumbs and whatever stuffing mix you found in the back of your pantry. As long as what you insert is vaguely crumbly and salty, you can add just about anything you want. Next, people seem to like potatoes. Take a large pot or bucket and boil about 10 peeled potatoes. Once soft, use a masher or your feet to make a paste. Add about one tub of margarine or butter and whip it using a wooden spoon or an old lug wrench. Have on hand a variety of little snackables like beets, peas and carrots, pickles, and bread. And, of course, make sure there is plenty of wine to steady your nerves when your relatives start making comments on your lack of culinary skills.

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