Christmas Parades are a Deadly Derangement of Culture and other Seasonal Asides-3

by Kane X. Faucher

With dinner on the make, you must now set the table. Just as it was during the time of Louis XIV, placement is a political necessity at table. Be sure to put the most obnoxious or flatulent relatives furthest from your eating area. Talkative members should be alternated with grumpy silent members to balance the bickering. Gravy boats and soup tureens should either be placed inconveniently out of reach or nailed to the table so as to minimize the number of potential projectile weapons. Knives should be dull and nearly useless, and elderly relatives should be placed closest to the bathroom and outfitted with bibs. As an optional flourish, you can place festive holiday crackers on every plate—it is more difficult to take the cheap jibes from preachy relatives seriously when they are wearing cheap paper crowns. Certain topics of conversation are to be stifled immediately: coronary operations, lugubrious longing for dead spouses, your drinking, the stock market, Dutch painting, and the state of the nation. Family scandals are fine, just so long as they don't involve you. If you come under critical fire, try to redirect by rallying various relatives to gang up on someone else at table. So, when countered with "you really ought to be married by now," you can deflect by asking Aunt Mergatroyd about her ongoing extra-marital affair with the pool boy. If truth mattered so much, it would have its own table setting.

Place conversational boors near those with hearing aids. If any relative tries to gain conversational dominance with intimately boring details of the cardboard box trade, use a shocking distraction device—suggestions include accidentally knocking the hot mashed potatoes on Cousin Margaret's lap, or blatting with one of those annoying air horns they sell at baseball games. Avoid placing relatives who despise each other in close proximity since the purpose of the family meal is to minimize injury and structural damage. The telling of jokes is always a gambit…Uncle Bob's anti-Semitism may be winsome at the dockyard, but may cause undue awkwardness when passing the cranberry sauce. Competitions involving the details of wealth and vacations should also be duly avoided, and the wind can be taken out of any blowhard's sails easily by diminution: "Oh, we had such a fabulous time in Jamaica last week, didn't we, Harold?"…to which you reply, "yes, Jamaica is a wonderful country. Pity that the actual Jamaicans are living in servitude and poverty because of all those resorts and feckless tourists who just want to engage in the fantasy of the White Man's paradise."

By this time, you should be getting quite adept at dodging gravy boats and having the same impotent skills at defusing volatile conflicts as the UN. If not, you can always get waylaid at the liquor cabinet while placing a call to the Order of Malta (that did wonders for Kosovo, as can be noted by the reigning peace and prosperity there). Perhaps you have saucier relatives with more interesting human dramas that more than make up for the bland fare that out-blands your cooking. Perhaps the "aunt" formerly known as Ethel's California sex change gives a ribald flavor to the usual griping, hooting and general emotional-terrorist clamor of relatives' discourse. If all else fails, you can just do what the Bush administration does when it finds itself in a tight spot: demonize the media and declare a national state of emergency…Translated in this case, just point an accusing finger at Uncle Phil and say that because of him a horde of vicious Mongols are en route to collect the nut sacks and nipples of everyone present. If anything, it should make your stab at Christmas dinner the most memorable one in years, especially if things get out of hand enough to involve the cops to dip their fingers in your cranberry sauce and haul off all your surplus relatives with the aid of plastic cuffs.

But let us consider the domain of gift giving. According to Marcel Mauss, who made his career doing research where there were no running toilets or martini bars, the potlatch was a sacred ceremony where rival bands met together for a very large feast and tried to outdo each other through the grandiosity of their generosity of gifts. It is exactly how the Shriners would be like on amphetamines, or how the Red Cross really ought to operate. Whoever gives the most wins, which was rather remarkable for someone like Mauss and the rest of us where the rules are whoever takes the most lives in a fancy summer beach house in Bermuda. According to Jacques Derrida, founder of the methodical non-method of deconstruction that both baffles and excites millions of college students every year, there is no such thing as a gift because every act of giving is for some form of return, i.e., you better pleasantly acknowledge Aunt Betty's thoughtless gift of tartan socks or else you're out of the will. We give in order to be recognized, says Derrida, but I do question the quality of this recognition. For example, if in a drunken haze I give mom and dad a pair of matching dildos, the kind of recognition I will receive for such a gesture is not something I should want…unless they really enjoy the gift, in which case I really don't want the recognition. When noticing the usual low caliber of thoughtless gifts we give each other out of rote obligation and the pressure of guilt, one can problematize our French deconstructionist's viewpoint. For, if what he says is true, then I believe that people would take more care to discern what kind of gifts they give. Gifts usually fall into various categories. Some gifts are given to remind someone else exactly in what esteem they are held—a holly wreath given to your neighbors tells them that you marginally recognize their existence, but don't care so much about them beyond perhaps calling the cops if they see your house is being jacked. A gift of erotic oils and a box of condoms to a female colleague mean that you are looking to get fired for sexual misconduct at the workplace. A dead dog's head and a note with "I'll get you" given to your boss tells the police that you are now willing to live the remainder of your life with daily drop the soap privileges. A diet book given to your wife means you'll be sleeping on the couch for the next six months—if you're lucky. The range of gift types tell the recipients that you care, don't care, or care creepily too much about them, and so it is essential to show the best judgment when selecting gifts, and not to do so after a few too many whiskey sours.

© 2007 Kane X. Faucher

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