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12/23/2008: Christmas Eve Eve.

The Advent Calendar has been updated through 12/22. I’m going to try to finish #23 between now and tomorrow morning — try — but I’m not sure I’ll make it. If you’ve seen the length of the last few, I don’t think you can blame me. :) Whatever I don’t finish, I’ll resume right after Christmas. Late? Yes, but at least you’ll have something to do during those cold, sad days after Santa packs it in for another year of bear-like hibernation. (Plus, I think #22 is both suitably celebratory and cliffhangerish to last us a couple of days, if it comes to that.)

The holiday season has blitzed through in what feels like hours, and I’m sitting here wondering how the fuck it’s possible that tomorrow is Christmas Eve. It’s kind of mind-blowing that by this time tomorrow night, I’ll be drunk, full of rumaki and trying to remain upright in my sister’s crowded living room while kids zip past with still-wrapped Wii games, screaming loudly. I can’t wait.

On Christmas Day, the woman’s family is coming here for dinner, and we still aren’t prepared. Case in point: A 24-inch Playmobil circus tent remains on the dining room table. We haven’t even gone food shopping yet, which bodes for an interesting dinner menu. I assume we’ll end up serving jelly beans and toast a la A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Nobody will appreciate the humor in it.

And despite my best efforts, or at least my best half-hearted efforts, I still haven’t even finished getting presents for everyone. Thank God for gift cards and holiday-themed scratch-off Lotto cards. Rumors persist that a number of six-year-olds will be receiving them for Christmas.

I’m pumped. Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year, and nothing can mess that up.

That’s our Christmas tree. By the end of the night, ten thousand presents will be underneath it. (Still haven’t wrapped them, and I’m honestly desperate enough to comb the paper for some gift wrapping service that will charge me a hundred bucks to cover things in tearaway paper.)

It’s a great tree. I feel like I haven’t looked at it enough this year, but perhaps that’s how I can justify keeping it up until April. Right now, we’re writing shopping lists, listening to Christmas songs blare over a dusty old stereo, drinking spiked Cranberry Splash and trying to find the right place to keep my coconut crab taxidermy while company pours in and out of our apartment. It’s an atypical and beautiful Christmas, no matter the bullshit.

I want to do one more blog entry before I call it quits until 12/26, but in case I can’t, let’s get it out of the way now: Merry Christmas, you’re all awesome, and you’re the reason that I can still enjoy doing this ridiculous website after almost a decade. Have an amazing holiday, and come back prepared to share stories.

Comments are open — talk about your Christmas!


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Discussion Thread: 229 comments
1 ... 3 4 5

Goob and Mystie….RELAX!!!!
Its christmas, just be happy that new readers have found this site.
You come off quite condescending.
Dont scare off the new people……

Ghosted by Really? @ 12/26/2008 11:23 AM EST

Okay, now that the holiday is over, how is everyone spending the fallout?

I’m at work, don’t know if I’ll get anything done because things seem a bit dead, but the may not stay dead. Pretty tired because I was up last night catching up on some sci fi shows.

Ghosted by Tresjolie9 @ 12/26/2008 11:27 AM EST

Goob

I know Cristmas may be the 800-lb gorilla in the room, but let us not forget Yule, Chanukah and Kwanzaa. They too involve gift giving this time of year, is it fair for celebrants of these holiday’s to wait for the official ‘Christmas Failout’ thread to behave like giddy children. And as for newbies to X-E, well this isn’t “Fight Club” I don’t find it to be such a wrong, for excited posters to jump the gun, the holiday’s afterall are suppose to be about a certain loss of self restraint.

Ghosted by Shawn @ 12/26/2008 11:40 AM EST

I didn’t know there were so many rules on this blog. Huh.

Ghosted by 4-LOM @ 12/26/2008 11:44 AM EST

My apologies if it came off wrong.

Ghosted by Mystie @ 12/26/2008 11:51 AM EST

Guys it’s just a tradition around here to wait for Fallout because it’s more fun to share all together instead of some people on this thread and some on the other. Especially since it makes it easier when you have fits of nostalgia later and wanna see what you and everyone else got this year – you know to look in that thread. Plus it just feels fitting for Matt to share his haul first, y’know? It’s not a *rule* to wait for that thread, but it’s a lot more exciting to share then, and it’s how the sharing has always been done around here. I don’t think there’s any need to be nasty to people who didn’t know, though.

Ghosted by jazzy @ 12/26/2008 11:52 AM EST

This is a long post, and I apologize, but every word is absolutely necessary to explain to you exactly how bad my Christmas was this year:

My Christmas sucked, which is devastating to me because I had been planning it to be remarkablous. I work 9am to 6pm and I have an hour commute. That gave me about 3 hours to do Christmassy things each evening which sadly is not enough. Work made me too stressed to even think about celebrating anyway. On top of this, I started celebrating on December 1st which was a huge mistake.

My parents didn’t put lights up, which I suggested was akin to redecorating the house with Nazi paraphernalia, much to their chagrin. It rained the last week of Christmas. We also went to my brother’s house instead of hosting it, which is a huge monkey-wrench in the works. We ALWAYS host Christmas.

Christmas Eve was supposed to be the great equalizer as it’s the one night of the year where I can truly enjoy peace and solitude. I retreat to the basement, the birthplace of my childhood, and watch old Christmas specials on delightful VHS. The grandfather of them all being the SNICK toons Christmas special. I knew crawling into that dank tomb and hanging out with Rocco, Tommy Pickles, and Stinky Wizzleteets would fix everything – but even this was robbed from me!

We had relatives spend Christmas eve with us! UNHEARD OF AND UNHOLY! I can’t lay under a lit Christmas tree and space out with relatives watching me! My glorious solemn night was instead replaced with an evening of watching my idiot backwoods cousins mash the buttons on my Wii and imitate EXACTLY EVERY sound effect they heard, and POORLY. They actually started betting money on Mario Kart Wii, which they had never played. It went something like this:

Dumb 1: ” REEBERT! Hey I bet I win this race!”

Dumb 2: “No way man! PEWWW PEEWWWW!”

Dumb 1: “Yea I will! HONK HONK! I bet you 2 dollars!”

Dumb 2: “VERRRP! But we haven’t won any races yet. DOINK!”

Dumb 1: “Oh yea…WOMP-WOMP! Hey but we’re 9th and 10th.”

Dumb 2: “YEA WE ARE! BOOYAH! WE’RE GONNA BUST A CAP!”

Dumb 1: “Bet you 2 dollars we place 9th and 10th SPOOSH!”

Dumb 2: “YOU’RE ON GANGSTAH! PLAYA! BERDOIIINGGG!”

It might sound funny if they were kidding around, but these kids were 100% serious. I repeat: they were speaking that way seriously. I really hoped that the next day I would unwrap a firearm of some kind, because I never craved the taste of bullet in mouth so much as that night. Please Santa, hear my call.

Bed time came, I couldn’t sleep because the idiots refused to go to bed. They kept playing Wii in the basement, and the television down there is right below my bed upstairs. I kept hearing what I started referring to as a “retard-echo”. You’d hear a sound effect from the TV and then hear one of them imitate incredibly poorly right after. Finally, sleep found me.

When I woke up, I had a sore throat and a terrible cough. Merry Christmas! The morons had stayed up well past 2am and had fallen asleep….ON THE FLOOR….in the basement. The bare concrete floor. Like animals. They left my Wii on, frozen on the race-win screen. They placed 9th and 10th, go figure.

I’m not going to complain about the gifts I received. I didn’t really ask for anything, and so considering what I got I did pretty well. I won’t go into details as apparently it’s NOT ALLOWED YET.

After we opened our presents (and woke up and kicked out the animals downstairs, sending them to their next family-oritented destination up north) we went to my brother’s house for Christmas dinner. This consisted of an exact clone of every meal my brother’s wife has ever cooked: ludicrously fatty roast beef, withered vegetables, mashed potatoes with enough garlic to make Dracula explode, and cheesy cauliflower. If you have ever eaten a meal my brother’s wife has cooked, this is what was on the menu. Every. Time. I’m convinced she’s a Stepford Wife who has been through too many electrical storms.

The time came to unwrap presents for the children. My little cousins (the ones who are sentient) were incredibly ungrateful as usual. No surprise there. They did however give a lot back in the form of coughing on me and anything I was eating or drinking all night. This actually didn’t bother me much, because I was violently ill before I came over and felt somewhat invincible, plus I got to pretend that I was the cause of their coughing via rapid plague-like contagion.

Papa Noel had screwed me over, but Papa Nurgle had bestowed me with his greatest gift!

Today I wake up, more sick than yesterday. We had a half-day at work, but I simply cannot drive. I have that full-body throb you get when you have a fever. Makes you feel kind of like you’re walking in another dimension. When I wake up, the first thing I see is the table I set up for all my Christmas swag. I never finished it.

I have a full box of Christmas Crunch left over, the giant super-cookie I baked with the remnants of the dough leftover from making gingerbread men, and a half bottle of Pomegranate 7UP and I can’t bring myself to eat them since the season is now gone. What I am about to say may very while terrify you, so move anything able to be thrown in an horrific rage out of your reach. I did not get to watch “A Christmas Story” this year.

I know, I know… -_-

So anyway, I had a horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad Christmas. I read some of your tales and feel good that so many had better luck than I did this year. And the silver-lining to this is that it’s going to help me plan better for next year. For example: No starting on December 1st, huge mistake. Instead, I am going to start on December 12th so that it would be a true and traditional celebration of the original “Twelve Days of Christmas”. That, to me, sounds like ample time to get happy and not burned out by all holiday-related items.

Wish me luck for next year X-Ers and ADVENTurers! I had the worst Christmas yet!

Ghosted by Morfnblorsh @ 12/26/2008 12:03 PM EST

Mysite and Goob

Can you please point us to the posting rules and FAQ. I can’t find them anywhere.

Ghosted by Mama's Boy @ 12/26/2008 12:08 PM EST

That was a long post.

Ghosted by Zuckuss not 4-LOM @ 12/26/2008 12:08 PM EST

Morfnblorsh

I’m sorry you had such a rough Christmas, but you’ve got 12 more days to make it up! The twelve days of Christmas is the time between Christmas and Epiphany (Dec. 25-Jan 6th). So make up for your earlier mishaps by celebrating for the next two weeks!

Also RE: Fallout thread: I don’t think Goob or Mystie meant any harm. Newer readers may not be familiar with the fallout thread and we’re just trying to fill them in. It’s more fun to wait to share, in my opinion…

Ghosted by Cameron T. @ 12/26/2008 12:10 PM EST

I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to make it sound like you COULDN’T post what you got. Only to inform the new people that Matt traditionally posts a thread where we all talk about what we got for Christmas. There was NO intention to be an ass and I apologize to anyone who interpreted it that way.

Ghosted by Mystie @ 12/26/2008 12:11 PM EST

This year I got my own blog.

Ghosted by Bellosh @ 12/26/2008 12:20 PM EST

Cool Mystie . It’s not like I had anything to post about cause I didn’t receive anything. Just wanted to post about the things my boys received.

Ghosted by Mamas Boy @ 12/26/2008 12:23 PM EST

Cameron

Thanks for the ray of hope, I do appreciate the gesture, but it’s over for me! The Christmas I have been trained to celebrate is not the religious one, and hartdly the family-oriented one. For me it’s the selfish, food-gorging one where you think back to days when life was more fun.

You laugh, you eat, you get choked up when Ralphie goes insane and gives Scut Farkus a deviated septum, and by the end of the night in the wee hours, you go to bed totally ready for Christmas the next day and fall asleep damn-near immediately.

Ghosted by Morfnblorsh @ 12/26/2008 12:35 PM EST

Morfnblorsh, sorry about your Christmas as well. It is always difficult to adjust to the way things change, when the dynamics of the family change, the family gets bigger, and new kids start coming into the picture, destroying long standing traditions.

You still have until New Years to have yourself a nice VHS marathon in your own basement. Maybe it is time to make some new nostalgic traditions, for now? Plan the Christmas alone with the VHS this weekend, if you have a Boston Market by you, take out a nice turkey dinner from there, and light up the lights.

Ghosted by Tresjolie9 @ 12/26/2008 12:43 PM EST

Christmas….after Christmas? I say this is highly irregular…but…maybe…maybe you and Cameron are on to something here.

Ghosted by Morfnblorsh @ 12/26/2008 12:47 PM EST

Morfnblorsh-
Do your cousins look anything like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyKvD-4IxOY

Ghosted by PlantMonster @ 12/26/2008 12:56 PM EST

Lot of people I know of do things like “Christmas after Christmas,” and “Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving.” Happens when people work, or are away at school or traveling and can’t all get together until the weekend. You really seem to need a “Christmas after Christmas. If you can cook, cook what you wanted to make for Christmas, if you can’t, Boston Market is good. If you have anyone to invite over, invite them over and have the holiday that you wanted to have.

Ghosted by Tresjolie9 @ 12/26/2008 12:59 PM EST

Anybody else listen to Mannheim Steamroller’s An American Christmas on the radio when traveling? I think the wife was only mildly interested but I love that kind of stuff.

Ghosted by thejyav @ 12/26/2008 1:01 PM EST

Sends Morfnblorsh a bottle of Nyquil and a bottle of Southern Comfort…take your pick! Similar taste, same effect in the long run – sweet oblivion.

My Christmas hasn’t really happened yet. My son worked Christmas Day, his live-in girlfriend works until 9:30 tonight, and my daughter works today through New Year’s Eve (she works at Six Flags and on New Year’s they are open til midnight or later depending on the lines), so I have no idea when I’m cooking the traditional dinner. Unless they want to eat at 10 at night, maybe.

And I STILL haven’t finished restringing lights on my tree . If my daughter didn’t take the car to work, I’d seriously consider braving the day-after crowds and go buy 20 boxes (my estimate of how many lights are on this monster) of new lights and deal with it next year…starting the day after Halloween.

Speaking of the sales, the Bay Area radio news is saying that there’s no traffic to speak of…are people not shopping today??

Morfnblorsh, I do have to thank you for something…how could I have forgotten to watch Home Alone?!!? As soon as I read your post, I stuck it in the VCR. Thank you!

Ghosted by Trish @ 12/26/2008 1:30 PM EST

Goob, please don’t speak for everybody. Some regulars may be rolling their eyes, but some of them may be happy to see so many newbies posting and just make a mental note to skip over that person’s post when they repost it in the Fallout Thread, just like we might choose to skip over posts that are hugely long, or badly written, or trolling. Personally, I like to take advantage of this handy little feature on my mouse that scrolls past things, no one ever has to know! :D

Hope everybody had a safe and fun Christmas! I’m off to Disneyland for the first time in years and the first time EVER all decked out for Christmas. Trish, I sure hope that no traffic things holds out for down here too :)

Ghosted by squee4242 @ 12/26/2008 1:33 PM EST

I, for one, am leaving my tree up until my husband comes home, no matter how long it takes. I’m going to wrap up all the stuff I bought for him and stick it under there, and there it’s going to stay. And I will plug it in every night. By God, we’ll do Christmas right even if it’s in February.

My Christmas Day turned out all right (long story), but I wish this Christmas season had been a little nicer. There’s always next year, I s’pose.

Ghosted by Annette @ 12/26/2008 1:34 PM EST

Hey everyone — hope you had a good one! Finally having a chance to sit still for the first time in two days — will post the Fallout in a little while. :)

Ghosted by Matt @ 12/26/2008 1:40 PM EST

Whoever attempted another XE Fandom Secret
http://i41.tinypic.com/142c2f7.jpg, was rejected in today’s post
http://community.livejournal.com/fandomsecrets/229724.html, for being “not fandom,”

Repost and argue that it is fandom! Mista Snowman is a character on the X-Entertainment Advent Calendar ;-)

Ghosted by Anonymous @ 12/26/2008 1:46 PM EST

Heeeeyyyyy, KIDS!!! Looks like we all had a fairly halfway kinda sorta decent X-E-mas this year. Hung out at my sister’s place, went to church, and snagged two treat bags there, with great big honkin’ oranges. If my Christmas can end with at least one good sized orange and apple, then it was good. Who needs a hug?

Ghosted by kingklash @ 12/26/2008 2:22 PM EST

Hey new readers. Not everyone is rolling their eyes at your lists.

Filling in people is fine, but “yelling” at them because they don’t know the “rules” is really kind of a dick thing to do.

One of the great things about this blog, is that there are, generally, no rules, and everyone plays nice.

If we start getting into this elitist mind set of “long time readers” and “new readers”, then count me out. Be glad there are new readers discovering the site and enjoying Matt’s work. No need to scare them off.

There’s been plenty of times discussions have spilled over to other threads, so there’s no harm no foul if it gets discussed here.

Besides, you can always just use the handy scroll bar on the right to skip posts that you feel doesn’t fit the current thread.

Tried to head to the mall, but that was a silly idea. It’s pretty mobbed today.

Ghosted by Darth Galvatron @ 12/26/2008 3:32 PM EST

CANG WE ALLS GET ALONGS?

It’s cool. :) Not everyone is a super regular reader and not everyone has even been reading for a year, so not everyone knows about the Fallout thread, which is coming shortly. If you’ve already posted your list here, feel free to duplicate in the forthcoming post.

Ghosted by Matt @ 12/26/2008 3:46 PM EST

Christmas was…..off this year. Money has been tight, I’m laid off, my mother is sorta down because my little sis hs been gone, shes home now, but will be gone Saturday back to Louisville, and my mothers side of the family decided to put off a huge get together like we normally do in favor of a much more scaled down version because my moms oldest sister is int he hospital and quite in poor heatlh. So…I really wasn’t feeling itt his year, and folks, I tried my damndest. Or maybe thats wrong..maybe I was..but no one else was ? Which in turn brought my spirit down a few notches ? Hell, I was keeping pretty good track of the Advent till up to the 21st..my birthday, hoping that somehow, alittle bit of Mista Snowmans Christmas Magic would leap into everyone last minute and we’d be holly jolly and awesome till New Years..it did not, but KNOWING XE is here, along with alot of good folks..and that while we’ve cut back on events, and shindigs, get togethers, and various shenanigans…we’re all here together, in cyberspace, at home with out families, and even over miles and miles.

Looking forward to the Fallout,
Hoping everynone had a great Christmas, and heres hoping a wonderful New Year.

Ghosted by ChallengeChesnut @ 12/26/2008 4:38 PM EST

Last!

Ghosted by Teddy Ray @ 01/17/2009 4:28 PM EST

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