Christmas Tree Update

If you're not familiar with the complete beast of a Christmas tree we had this year, you can read this and get up to speed.

Today I took the beast down and got rid of it. I thought I would immortalize it's passing.

Every year I take a piece of scrap plastic from work and use it to wrap my Christmas trees up so they don't shit needles all over my house on the way out the door. It saves me a bunch of cleanup time and keeps me from finding pine needles in my socks in August because as we all know, pine needles, glitter and that fake grass from Easter Baskets are the most adhesive objects in the known universe and can never be successfully removed from any surface.

Of course the thing is so huge it basically just looks like for some reason there was a full sized gorilla in my den and the only thing I could think of to deal with it was to throw a tarp on it. Don't see it? Here:

If only all of life's problems could be dealt with by throwing a tarp over them and pretending they don't exist. Tree gorillas aside, I hauled it out of the house to get rid of it. This turned out to be a whole production in and of itself.

I seriously don't understand how we got it in there in the first place. I had to put my feet on the wall and use my body weight to haul it through that doorway like a cartoon character just to get it out of the room. I'm sure I ruined at least half the branches jamming it through the doorframe as it apparently it got even bigger in diameter from when it went in. Logic would suggest that the branches had settled after we brought it in before Christmas, explaining the trouble i had getting it out. However, I suspect it grew two feet of it's own accord because it's an asshole.

Once it was outside it wasn't too bad at least. For a tree roughly the size of an adolescent rhino it was deceptively light; Possibly due to the fact that I put off dealing with it until almost a month after Christmas and it was so dry I'm surprised a slightly sunny day reflecting through the window didn't cause it to ignite. Or some other reason, maybe. Off it goes to the tree graveyard.

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The tree graveyard is this spot in the woods behind our house I take the Christmas tree every year to dump. Apparently putting your tree out in the woods to decompose naturally is good for wildlife that can use it as shelter, but mostly it's just easier for me to huck it in the woods and not deal with it again, so I don't feel like I really get any merit badges on my sash for it. (Do boyscouts get sashes? That seems like it's probably more of a Girlscout thing. Boyscouts should start getting sashes because fuck off, boys can be fabulous too if they want.) 

I also like the tree graveyard because the particular spot I go to is sort of this lip that overlooks a steep hill into the little area where all the trees go. Its really fun to hurl the tree off the cliff and watch it tumble to it's fate. Because I'm nine apparently and get satisfaction from that sort of thing.

You can see the tree from each year we've lived in this house down there, though the one from four Christmases ago is is hard to see at this point. If we ever move I might sneak back here in the middle of the night in January every year to keep throwing Christmas trees off this hill. I want it to be a barren wasteland of old Christmas trees someday, and also I like the though that whoever lives here after me has a little bit of a paranoid breakdown fifteen years from now trying to figure out why Christmas Trees keep appearing in the middle of the night.

Just for reference, if you look a little closer, that's last year's tree being suffocated by the malformed girth of this years tree.

Maybe next year I'll just come back down here and get this one to put up again. It will probably manage to still be green somehow. Out of sheer malice I suspect.

Ho Ho Ho

Nothing special here. Just a little Santa. Gracefully tap-dancing on the line between the adults and children at the annual gathering. While The adults are all chatting in one room I'm in the other one with the kids drawing Santas.

Taking a Stand

I don't know that I quite understand those people who who are all "IT'S MERRY CHRISTMAS, NOT HAPPY HOLIDAYS!" while, I presume, putting one hand jauntily on their hip and wagging the pointer finger of their other hand back and forth in front of their face sassily before going back to living under the assumption that nobody who is different from them actually counts ever.

I mean, sure Christmas is -a- holiday in this season, but even if you are Christian and we operate under the assumption that as far as you are concerned any of the other religious holidays celebrated around this time can go fuck themselves, at the very least there is still New Years. Unless you are some sort of weird calendar denier, insisting on only saying 'Merry Christmas" is just incorrect logically.

People act as if saying "Happy Holidays" is the equivalent of looking directly into their eyes whist repeatedly punching a baby Jesus doll in the face with a pair of brass knuckles made out of dildos. 

Meanwhile I'm over here desperately trying to avoid eye contact with strangers and going to the other entrance if I see someone with a little bell and a bucket in front of Wal-mart. I guess some people can "keep muh Jesus", others can wish each other a pleasant non-denominational seasonal greeting, and I'll continue to try not to interact with anyone. And so the world keeps turning.

People Who Take Their Dog to See Santa Are A-holes.

There are many Holiday traditions that I simply don't understand. One such tradition is taking your dogs to go have their picture taken with Santa Claus.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against Mall Santas or anything like that. When you are a kid, going to the mall to see the ACTUAL Santa Claus and tell him what you want for Christmas is a completely awesome experience. (I of course am the exception as I distinctly remember being pant-crappingly terrified of going anywhere near Mall Santa as a child. Apparently my general dislike of strangers even included Father Christmas himself).

I love the Idea of taking kids to see Santa when they are young. It's an experience parents can treasure, it creates a memorable moment for the kid, and its all around a good bonding experience for everyone involved.

You know who gives exactly zero fucks about Santa Claus though? Your dog.

Our furry family pets have no concept of Christmas, Santa, or generally anything besides wanting to eat food, nap and lick their own butthole. In fact,  in my experience they are downright against the idea of being taken to a strange place to be plopped on a chair with a large, scary bearded stranger, and then screeched at by their owners and yet another stranger with a camera trying to get them to look in the right direction.

The entire ordeal seems generally confusing and upsetting for them. The exercise of taking the dog to see Santa is clearly entirely for the benefit of the owner without consideration for how dog feels about it.

In fact, here is a short list of things I've comprised that you can do for your dog that they will appreciate more than being taken to see Santa:

• Give them a dog treat
• Take them for a nice walk
• Throw a ball or a stick with them for a while
• Literally just do nothing and leave them alone to do whatever it is they are already doing
• Take them for a ride in the car (to a place where they aren't going to be manhandled by a festive stranger)
• Give them a nice belly rub

Further, here is a list of things you can do with your dog that they may not appreciate necessarily, but will cause them less displeasure and confusion than being trundled off for a strange and uncomfortable holiday experience.

• Read a complete Shakespeare play to them start to finish
• Register them to be a wedding officiant on a shady internet site
• Show them a series of artistic photographs of Cantaloupes
• Make them a fake ID
• Pretend you are a character on Cheers and shout "Norm!" at them every time they enter a room before returning to whatever you were doing.

When it comes down to it, I just don't get the appeal of dragging a creature who has no concept of Christmas to take a picture with Santa Claus, an experience which is clearly not enjoyable for them, purely for the sake of my own gratification.

Or at least that's what I thought about it before this:

My wife decided she wanted to take the dogs to see Santa. I articulately and clearly explained why I disagreed with the practice. I then packed the car up with two dogs and a pair of Christmas hats at 8.am on a Sunday because as it turns out I do not get a vote and therefore can shove it.

Now, I still believe all of the things I said above are true, but goddamn if watching that man in his fake beard struggle to hold my two dogs still long enough for the photographer to snap a picture as they flailed their little asses off trying to get away from him was not the best thing I've ever seen.

They hated it. They hated Santa from the top of his red hat to the tips of his pleather faux-boot shoe covers. They hated the stupid Christmas hats we put on them and they hated the noise of everyone trying to coax them to look at the camera. They are pretty well trained dogs, we constantly get compliments in public abut how well behaved they are but they were simply not having one bit of Santa.

Now, while my dogs hated this, I on the other hand could barely stand I was laughing so hard while trying to convince the photographer to take the picture when Olive  was a blur of kicking feet and Griff was halfway off the chair making a break for it while Santa desperately held on to his back legs.

In the desperate confusion of writhing dogs and flopping elastic-bound Christmas hats the photographer actually managed to snap the above picture in the .5 seconds the two of them were holding still and looking in the same direction. Personally I'd have much preferred this years Christmas card to be a picture of them being maniacs, but you can't win 'em all.

If you take your dog to see Santa Claus you, like me, are totally an A-hole. You know what though? I'm alright with that because someday those  four-legged little mongrels aren't going to be around anymore and you'll always have a hilarious memory and a potentially epic photo to remember them by.

Happy Holidays, A-holes.