Oh, hello there! Welcome! Come on in! Come on in! Dust your boots off in the breezeway. I have a special mat you can use for it that’s woven from human hair sourced from the tribes of the South Pacific. Best snow-wiping hair ever designed, by God. Once you’ve cleaned up, I have a splendid repast of beggar’s purses and dolloped lobster turnovers awaiting you in the dining room. You may begin eating these haute goodies at 7:45 pm and no sooner. Please do not touch ANY of the decorations in the hallway as you proceed toward the food. My decorations are for admiring only. If you mar them in any way, I will grate off your genitals using a microplane. I am the Joneses. You cannot ever keep up with me.

I am hardly alone in such rituals. Try as you might, Christmas fiends, you cannot kill Williams-Sonoma. I know because I’ve been shitting on this company’s catalog every Christmas for YEARS , as a matter of both tradition and moral principle. But all of my efforts to drown this yuppie trinket hive in the toilet have seemingly been in vain. In fact, last year, I myself nearly died before this company did. And I’m a sturdy fellow. I work out an elliptical trainer five times a week and occasionally eat fruit. I am strong. I am invincible. I AM MAN. Alas, I am no match for a company wily enough to sell Star Wars Le Creuset roasting pans for $450 (HOLY LIVING FUCK) and somehow make it work. How does W-S do it year after year?

I got that microplane from the Williams-Sonoma catalog, by the way. True, I COULD have bought a microplane at your local Pathmark. They have a rack of them hanging above the Pop-Tart shelf for some reason. But why buy one there when I can support my local (international) mom-and-pop (publicly traded) store (merchandising oligarchy) instead? I’m no fool. I know what’s best for America, and what’s best for America is ignoring every horrible thing going on and, instead, assigning two entire months on the calendar to spoiling myself, cutting down precious wildlife, and indulging in retail spending practices so irresponsible that every accountant on the planet cries their eyes out at night just thinking about it all.

And that, in turn, is why Williams-Sonoma will never die. You and I shall one day. We’ll burn to death in some great, wrath-of-God ash storm. But the robots will live on after that, and they’re gonna need to impress each other with unwieldy layer cakes that spontaneously detonate, sending sprinkles and M&M shrapnel to all corners of the cyberparlor:

Also, the company has shuttered a lot of brick-and-mortar Williams-Sonoma locations in favor of selling designer chicken coops directly to hotels, banks, and other industrial concerns. OH WOW DID I JUST SEE THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT METER ON SANTA’S SLEIGH SPIKE INTO THE RED? You know I did. According to every Christmas movie I’ve ever watched, Christmas spirit is in great peril every year. That’s why we need overpriced fondue pots more than ever.

Well, according to an article I just Googled, the company is strong in something called “omnichannel retailing,” a term I will look no further into because I don’t hate myself. Also, millennials apparently LOVE West Elm, which W-S also owns. West Elm is IKEA for people who don’t want to say they bought their furniture at an IKEA, so that all tracks. I have West Elm furniture in my house. It’s alarmingly small furniture. Really, only my dog can fit on the chair we got. He weighs 15 pounds.

That’s the cover of this year’s catalog. What a goddamn mess. Oh well, my butler Jansen can clean all that shit up.

Don’t worry, I have six more unexploded cakes where that came from for you and me to enjoy tonight. Oh, but that’s only a sneak preview of all the tastefully needless shit I ordered for Christmas. Join me, won’t you, in exploring the many other precious wares in this year’s Williams-Sonoma catalog. Let’s sit together on this West Elm divan and flip through its hallowed pages, one by one. This is all the stuff you get your wife AFTER you’ve unveiled the new Peloton you got her.

Drew says: Two pages in and we’ve already crossed off the ARTISAN square on this catalog’s Bingo card. And HOBNAIL, too! That was NOT on my card, but I’m delighted to see it all the same. Because, you see, ANY upper middle upper class homemaker can plunk down $500 for a stand mixer with a paddle attachment and then never use it. But it takes a real Barbara to get one that’s also a STATEMENT, one that says, “I want this mixing bowl to look like fine china, so that people are really dazzled when rogue gingerbread batter comes flying out of this bitch.”

We, as a culture, killed salted caramel roughly five years ago. We killed it at the exact same time we killed red velvet. The rule of thumb is that if Starbucks offers a particular flavor, that flavor already died and went to boomer heaven.

Drew says: Love to watch that luxury melt, do you not? It is, itself, a great luxury … so long as you whisk the cocoa shavings into that heady milk froth with the centrifugal force of a fucking particle accelerator. Otherwise, all that melted chocolate stubble floats to the surface and you’re left with a cup of hot milk that has a chocolate gravy skin floating on top. The sampler package also comes with a salted caramel variety. FANCY THAT.

Drew says: The catalog doesn’t actually tell you WHAT you win if you happen to luck upon the golden peppermint bark. Ah, but I can guess. You, dirt-poor Charlie Bucket, and your grandfather will get to take a tour of Willy Sonoma’s Bark Factory! It’s every child’s dream come true! Look over there! It’s a hobnail press! And over there! Why it’s a 10-story burr grinder operated by an army of dwarf Ina Gartens! If Mr. Sonoma takes a shine to our man Charlie, he might even show him where they freeze the Beef Wellington! Oh, but he better be a good little boy. If he’s spoiled like Veronica Featherington (from Potomac), or a fat little glutton like Augustus Newyorktimes (from Greenwich), or a loud little shit like Maylen Myerlen (from whatever the nicest suburb of Salt Lake City is), Mr. Sonoma could drown him in the salted caramel river flowing through the premises! He’s a generous man, but also terribly vindictive.

Drew says: Hey, this bark doesn’t have any peppermint in it. What the fuck. Why don’t I just eat dead beetles while I’m at it?

Price: $599.95 (Suggested retail price $700)

COPY: “Powerful Vitamix gifts. With an innovative Vitamix machine, their favorite treat is ready at the push of a button…. Brushed stainless, white (EXCLUSIVE) or candy apple red (EXCLUSIVE).”

Drew says: That’s $600 for a fucking blender. Not just any blender, mind you, but the blender responsible for the advent (so Christmassy!) of the American infomercial, an art form conceived by Vitamix founder Papa Bernard back in 1949. Fuck you, Papa John. Papa Bernard is the OG papa, and always will be.

Anyway, Papa’s blender has become a must-have countertop appliance for smoothie-Americans who want to eat healthy without having to physically chew food. The Vitamix is useful in this regard because it can pulverize anything in its whirring hellblades: ice, nuts, strawberry seeds, human toes, etc. If you’re wealthy AND you were born without teeth, Papa has you covered. Don’t trust Papas Hamilton and Beach with your morning spinach chia blast.

Lemme just take this moment now to revisit Chris Heath’s old Simon Cowell profile in GQ, because the world’s foremost living v-neck collar is also its foremost smoothie evangelist:

After that, breakfast appears. It is the same each day. Hot water with lemon. Then papaya juice with lime. ("Tastes delicious, looks great," he rhapsodizes. "It looks fantastic when it’s brought in in the morning. It’s just the best-looking thing in the world.") Then oatmeal. Then tea. Then three different smoothies—a spinach smoothie, an antioxidant smoothie, and a super smoothie with seven fruits. "I love to wake up in a good mood and look forward to what’s coming," he says. "As soon as that tray is put in front of me, I can’t wait to have it. I like looking forward to things.”

Oh, are your smoothies and juices not PRESENTED to you on a sterling silver tray in the morning by some unnamed servant, hopefully ALSO named Jansen? Well then, you are not keeping an optimal health regimen, the way this living example of why British people should actually KEEP their bad teeth does: