We hit Target last night to pick up all of the little things that help make life cleaner, and I couldn't help browsing through the holiday section, partly because I secretly want it to be December, but mostly because it's impossible to resist a series of twenty fully illuminated seven foot Christmas trees, especially when they're placed on display tables that make them look more like ten foot Christmas trees.

On the stroll there, we passed by the Halloween clearance section, where everything was marked down to 50% of its original cost. There is nothing more depressing than seeing decorations for a holiday that's already passed. It just sucks the wind out of me. I know so many people who love to go ornament shopping on December 26th when the prices get slashed, but I'm the complete opposite. Once a holiday passes, I can't even hear its name without wanting to throw up.

Speaking of nausea, it's that time of year again: Hickory Farms gift boxes are back in style! I know everyone thinks they're gross, but I've been forever fascinated with the mysteriously indestructible cheeses and random sausage loafs found in each set. It's kind of like Christmas astronaut food. Nobody would buy a package of Cracker Barrel cheese that's been sitting out on an unrefrigerated shelf for three months, but with Hickory Farms, it's par for the course.

I've never been able to grasp the concept. It's not like the food in these boxes is so good that people need to have them, so I can only imagine that they're primarily used as gifts. Gifts by mail, for the most part. I don't think you'd bring this over to a friend's house and insist that he or she crack it open while you're sitting there, because it forces them to eat alien sausage while trying to fake a happy face.

At the same time, I love having a Hickory Farms box at my disposal during the holidays. Since they can apparently exist peacefully without any chill factor, the boxes serve as much for decorative use as they do for edible use. And let's face it...even if you think the contents are gross, the day will come when you're jussst hungry, drunk or depressed enough to grab a butterknife and swab warm, nondescript cheese over a cracked wheat wafer. It might take several weeks or even a few months, but eventually, "Beef Summer Sausage" will mean more to your personal lexicon than the assumed name of a gay porn flick.

I already did a ditty on a Hickory Farms gift box during the 2003 Advent Calendar, but the contents in this box are different enough for me to feel okay with rinsing and repeating. I've gone through tremendous trouble to assign numeric values to each ingredient in the photo above, which magically correlate to the descriptions below. See? I told you that X-E's Christmas season was going to rock. I'm already assigning numeric values!

1) I'm assuming this to be spreadable cheese, but the official title on the plastic tube is Smoked Flavor (Chub). I've only ever heard the word "chub" used to define a series of freshwater fish or a fat kid in middle school, but apparently, it also defines cheese. It isn't terrible. Tastes kind of like an upscale EZ Cheeze.

2) Ahhh, it's the Smokey Bar, my longtime favorite Hickory Farms foodstuff. A smoked blend of cheddar and Swiss cheeses, it's got a great two-tone color and a nice, subtle kick. Despite its actuality as a cheddar/Swiss mutt, it's more like gouda without the fun wax. You can spell gouda without good, but you can't say it without it.

3) You get a little box with three Cracked Wheat Wafers, which taste not unlike the crackers one might buy to feed a gregarious goat at the petting zoo. They're pretty awful, and what's worse, you don't even get an even number of them. If you're sharing this with your beloved, who gets the last cracker? When a freakin' cracker inspires the need for Solomon's wisdom, shit ain't right.

4) It looks like cheddar, but it's not -- it's Chedam, an orangey blend of cheddar and Edam cheeses. All of these "mixed cheeses" give me the impression that Hickory Farms is fronted by a series of really competitive mad doctors who refuse to provide cheese that hasn't been tweaked by some unscrupulous lab experiment.

5) Generally the largest and worst offering in any Hickory Farms gift box, the Beef Stick (subtitled "Beef Summer Sausage") is an all-too-thick, soaking, speckled meat log that is more suited to driving nails in hard pavement than eating. It's really, really gross.

6) A little jar of Sweet-Hot Mustard, which I couldn't bring myself to taste because the color was a little too mayonnaise-esque. I assume the mustard is meant to compliment the Beef Stick, making it even more useless for someone of my disposition. On the plus side, the jar of evil provides me with at least one way to make a play for the last Cracked Wheat Wafer. "If you give me the third cracker, you can have the entire tub of Sweet-Hot Mustard." Not since the Dutch bought NYC for a rosary necklace has a better deal laid in wait.

Posted by Matt on 11/02/2007. E-mail me!