Despite indications to the contrary, I love me some Christmas. But like anything, it's not without its faults. So let's get rid of those faults now, shall we?


Fuck You, Charlie Brown I showed my kid the Charlie Brown Christmas special the other day and she was depressed for the… Read more

1. Jesus

I'm telling you, Christmas would be improved markedly without all the fucking bullshit Jesus stuff involved. "But Drew!" you say, "The whole point of Christmas is to celebrate Christ's birth!" Not anymore, it isn't. The whole point of Christmas is for me to get loaded and eat a Thanksgiving's worth of food every night for an entire month. This holiday has completely outgrown its roots. We don't need the Jesus part in 2010. Dec. 25 isn't even his REAL birthday, you know. He was born on March 12. Also, his real name was Eugene Dunwoody. That's a FACT.


If we get rid of the religious part of Christmas, then we don't have to bother with the whole fucking PC semantics of it. You don't have to worry about saying "Merry Christmas" to some tightass liberal dipshit who was tricked into believing Kwanzaa is a real holiday. They can't get mad at you if they know there's no explicit Jesus undertone to the whole thing. TAKE THAT, YOU FUCKING PINKOS. On the flipside, I don't have to worry about every religious nutball ruining my good time opening gifts by constantly reminding me that the holiday is meant to commemorate the birth of the Son of God, who was then lashed to within an inch of his life and nailed to a cross, all because I jack off. You active Christians make me uncomfortable.

Without Jesus, everyone from every religion can finally jump in and celebrate the holiday without compunction. Face it, Jews: You may say you like going out to the movies and eating Chinese food on Dec. 25. But secretly, deep in your heart, you know you wanna buy a tree and string up lights and sing "The Christmas Song," which is a BEAUTIFUL song and well worth trading in any religion for. You should be able to do that without a shred of guilt. We can make Christmas the proper American holiday it ought to be, and not the tacky religious one that Gregg Easterbrook keeps demanding we recognize.

It's not unrealistic to get rid of Jesus from Christmas, you know. Pink Floyd did just fine without Syd Barrett. THINGS EVOLVE, PEOPLE.

2. Any Gift From The Body Shop

What is this? Avocado body butter? This is fucking USELESS. Did you really pay $15 for this? There are certain shops in the mall that exist solely to sell you pointless gifts that you need to buy because your goddamn Mom was too lazy to think of a wish list. This is why kids are fantastic. Sure, they scream and yell and break things and shit their pants. But when Christmas comes around, they are fucking ORGANIZED. They know exactly what they want and where it can be procured. No last-second purchase of a Zagat restaurant guide for them. If you don't know what you want for Christmas, you don't deserve to get anything. That's the rule. These are lean economic times. I'm not getting you something from Brookstone unless you've made it clear that you fucking need it. And you don't.


3. Christmas Cards That Do Not Include An Awkward Family Photo

The only reason to send me a Christmas card is so I can look at your family and pick apart each member's looks one by one. Did you get fat? Why is your child wearing that john-john? Are you really that much of a snobby prick? Is that your living room? Looks like it was designed by a blind heterosexual. This is Christmas. It's my season to JUDGE YOU. Don't send me some Christmas card that has no picture in it. You may as well be sending me a FiOs direct mail piece. Into the fireplace with it. AND NO PICTURES OF JUST YOUR DOG. If there's anything people care about less than your kids, it's your stupid fucking dog.

4. Actual Clothing In The Holiday Victoria's Secret Catalog

I'm aware that good porn is available for free on the internet, but I'm old, which means I look fondly upon analog jacking. Every year, they send a holiday Victoria's Secret catalog to my home, and every year they waste an untold number of pages trying to sell women actual pants, shirts, and loungewear. This sickens and repulses me. There's no need for a third of this catalog to turn into a J. Crew brochure. Just edit it down and give me full jacking material on every page. The catalog will stay on top of my shitter for at least three weeks longer.


(Apropos of nothing, I greatly enjoy Christmas catalogs that include wildly expensive holiday food you can have shipped right to your door. Oh, man. That $500 Williams Sonoma ham looks fucking GOOD. The Dean & DeLuca catalog is hot as shit. Only an asshole would pay $15 for a bag of glazed pecans, but they sure are pretty to look at.)

5. Lexus's December To Remember

Every year, people complain about those fucking red bows in the Lexus ads, and every year, Lexus keeps rolling them out. And they do this just to piss you off. They're basically like, "Oh, we know you hate us and our rich customers. But you know what? FUCK YOU. We're adding even MORE bows to this ES, and there's nothing you can do about it because you are fucking POOR and can't afford to go to a doctor. DEAL WITH IT."


6. Gift Guides

Gawker proper has always railed against magazine gift guides featuring products you can't possibly afford. And yet, they continue to thrive, even multiply. "Hey! Your Dad would love this $800 turntable that converts all his vinyl records to mp3s!" That's true. You know what else Dad would love? A FUCKING HELICOPTER. A fucking $30 million Huey helicopter with fucking double missiles on each side and a special cloaking device. And the Raiders! He would love the Oakland Raiders, and he'd also love a hovering sail barge, and this special Vuitton-designed Kindle carrying case that costs more than the original product! All perfectly realistic. FUCK YOU AND DIE.

The Gawker Field Guide to Gift Guides Dead or alive, you cannot escape the reach of the gift guide, telling you in magazines, newspapers, Read more


7. New Christmas Music

We don't need anymore new Christmas music. Ever. The canon has already been established. I heard a Coldplay Christmas song at the gym the other day. Here it is, and it's every bit as bland and neutered as you expect:

Every new Christmas album that comes out features one of two things: A.) a current artist mangling a holiday standard that didn't need to be covered, or B.) a current artist trying to create a NEW holiday standard that they can receive eternal royalties from so they can end up living like the About A Boy guy. You can hear them straining to be timeless. Both of these things are shitty and horrible and pointless. Do you realize Wilson Phillips released a holiday album THIS YEAR? Wilson Phillips! You didn't even know they still existed. But they DO, and they're adding to the ever-growing pile of new and inessential holiday music. Just leave Christmas to Elvis and Nat and Sinatra and Phil Spector and be done with it.


8. New Versions Of A Christmas Carol

I had to sit through a fucking Dora the Explorer version of the Dickens classic this year with Swiper the Fox standing in for Scrooge. And they really fuck you because the special is an hour long. That's a dagger, when you look at the guide and realize Dora's gonna be squawking at you in Spanglish for double the amount of time. Stop remaking this story. Just leave me with the Alistair Sim version that's been horribly colorized and airs on WPIX at 10:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve and ends up kinda scaring me shitless right before I go to bed. Did I just hear a chain rattling? WHY IS THE DOORKNOB TURNING?! It's Marley's purple ghost!

9. Ribbons On Gifts

Say, this is a nice gift I've wrapped for my Dad. You know what would make it even nicer? If I cinched it up with surprisingly sturdy ribbon that cost a buck at CVS and makes the present 572 percent harder to open. Watch with joy as your loved ones try to slide the ribbon off the gift only to have it jussst fail to reach the corner of the gift! Then watch them mangle the corner of the gift as they try and push the shithead ribbon off for good before yelling out FUCK and going for the scissors! Look, everyone hates wrapping gifts. But that's a fact of life. But ribbons are a completely unnecessary hindrance. We don't need them. Furthermore, I have never once in life properly calibrated the amount of ribbon needed to go around the gift twice before coming back and making a pretty bow. This is why Barnes & Noble puts a sticker on your shit when they gift wrap it. Speaking of which…


10. Surcharges For Gift Wrapping

FUCK. YOU. You're lucky I even went shopping this year, retailers of America. WRAP IT UP.