I'm not a churchgoer, but our local parish can always count on me to blow half a paycheck at their annual Christmas fair. Stuffed with gift basket raffles, longtime readers will remember my trials and triumphs at the 2004, 2006 and 2007 fairs. (I can't remember what made me miss the fair in 2005, but I have to assume that it was really, really important. Perhaps that was the night I foiled the Swedes from realizing their long-plotted terrorist strike.)

The setup is not uncommon for church-hosted Christmas fairs: Local residents and businesses donate wicker baskets filled with prizes (ranging from toys to electronics to holiday decorations and beyond), with visitors buying tickets to shove in their desired basket's corresponding raffle bag. Since I've come to consider winning one of these baskets as the true kickoff of my own personal holiday season, I always spend way too much cash to guarantee myself a win. (And when I say "way too much," I don't mean that in any form of subjective or relative manner. There is not a person on this planet who would consider the amount of raffle tickets I purchased this year as anything less than clinically insane.)

I've gone to this fair year after year for as long as I can remember, and as far as the raffles go, my strategy has always been simple: "WIN SOMETHING. WIN ANYTHING." For me, it's less about gunning for the truly awesome prizes and more about making sure my tickets are in enough bags to guarantee me at least one prize.

To aid in this endeavor, I always make sure to slightly fold or otherwise mangle my raffle tickets before chucking 'em into the bags. The thought process behind this is that the ticket-drawing churchy folks are more likely to pluck out a non-flat ticket than, uh, a flat one. Regrettably, I didn't realize that it was "legal" to affix preprinted name-and-address stickers to the raffle tickets, which is what pretty much all of the other compulsive gamblers were doing. These players would claim that they were just trying to save their wrists from a writing cramp, but I'm not stupid: They were thickening up their tickets to increase their chances for victory. Lousy, cheating dicks. Next year, I'm gonna tape pennies to each of my tickets and call it a side donation. On the other hand, when I consider my passion for this subject with a level of objectivity that can only come after a nap in the wee hours, I kind of want to strangle myself.

Anyway, I won Basket #64, filled with a bunch of Italian foodstuffs donated from a local store. (This was a common motif. Tonight, there are at least three dozen residents in my city basking in the glow of their newly-won baskets full of bullshit pine nuts.) Sure, I could've bought my way into silent partnership with this particular pork store for the amount I spent to win two bottles of balsamic vinegar, but the thrill is in the gamble. Still, I'm more convinced than ever that this raffle isn't entirely on the up and up. With the unholy number of tickets I spread around this stupid thing, there's just no way to explain why I didn't win eighteen or nineteen different baskets.

If we can estimate the retail value of loaves of provolone and dry sausage at fifty bucks each, I guess I almost broke even. Most of this stuff will likely sit in our cabinets for so long that we'll completely forget where it came from, but all in all, I could've done worse. One of the other raffles was for a $15 gift certificate to a barbershop across town, nestled in the center of a plastic Easter basket, surrounded by four bottles of travel-size shaving cream. If I'd won that, then tonight CNN would be richer one headline about a mysterious church fire.