Bloggin' On Christmas

Well, it's come to this. I'm writing a post on Christmas Day itself. Jesus Christ (literally). Christmas in my household is like the Ryder Cup. We have the morning sessions of breakfast and opening presents with my adult cousins on my dad's side and their little kids, and the afternoon sessions, featuring more presents and dinner with my mom's side of the family. In between these two gatherings, we have some downtime, hence why I'm on the ol' blogatron 3000.

Okay, there, I've justified that one! Next up, my excuse for why I've posted something at 12:03 AM on January 1.

The present tally for the day thus far stands at one gift certificate for the Swiss Chalet family of restaurants. I'm not going to lie, the gift-getting aspect of the holiday has really faded over the years. The Xmas I received a Ghostbusters firehall set is still probably in the top ten happiest days of my life, but that was all the way back in 2008....uh, um, er, I mean, 1988. Yeah, that's the ticket. The real gift of Christmas now is just being able to spend time with family and friends and I'm the only person to ever ever make that realization.

Moreso than gifts, Xmas is now about traditions. With my family, it's things like the aforementioned two-family morning/afternoon split, plus things like my great aunt's animatronic singing moose and recounting the time my grandfather's glass of tomato juice exploded over our dinner table. Between my friends, it's newly-formed traditions like gathering at my house on Christmas Eve to watch a movie and play video games, specifically a wrestling game from 2004 that we all still inexplicably keep playing and finding entertaining; in my defense, it's always entertaining to play as the Undertaker and tombstone someone into the ground.

On Xmas Day itself, we gather for a late-night movie at a local theatre. In past years it's specifically been a 'shitty' movie (the Punisher sequel and the Aliens vs. Predator sequel), but last year it was Up In The Air, so we broke our streak of non-quality. I almost feel like we should go see something extra-awful this year to make up for it, but there's no chance of True Grit being bad. The real challenge will be next year; we've seen two crapbags and two terrific movies, so now the next pattern will be to watch perfectly middling films on Xmas 2011 and 2012. How are we supposed to know a film is totally middling before watching it? Should we just cross our fingers and hope that Luke Wilson gets a couple more starring vehicles?

Well, I've killed enough time before the afternoon session. Enjoy the day, everyone, and don't forget to make love to Christmas!