Daily Read #21: Just have to get this out before I get all Kris Kringle

I have developed a little bit of scrooge reputation. I will admit that it's not completely unfounded. It's not intended to be ill-natured I just like to give all of my holidays their own space. My mental calendar resembles an elementary school lunch tray. I don't like my holidays touching anymore than I would like to dry my underwear in same dryer with that of my neighbors. Call me irrational.

I don't understand how some people can carve pumpkins while listening to Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire and munching on Cadbury eggs with their Valentine.

And don't even get me started on people that turn their Christmas lights back on to add to the color of a Fourth of July celebration. [If I'm ever mayor for a day, fines will be assessed to those houses that keep Christmas lights on after the groundhog's prediction for spring has passed.]

There are some things that I don't mind if they stick around in remembrance of Christmas past and future like Andes Mints and Orange Sticks but Cherry cordials have a very short shelf life and must be consumed before the final bowl game. [Which company makes cherry cordials? maybe they could sponsor their own bowl game; maybe BYU could go to a bowl game after all--The Cherry Cordial Bowl].

Does anyone drink egg-nog outside of a window of 15 days before or after winter solstice? I'm pretty sure the reason the earth tilts so far back at the solstice is because of all you egg-nog chugglers. I think it's the one food the FDA doesn't require nutritional information on seeing as how it shares a frightening number of health benefits with Draino. I get the whole restriction on how many bottles of sudafed one person can buy, but where are the regulations on people buying enough eggnog to marinade a Christmas Luau pig (We'll call the dish Mele Kalikimaka youfat).

What about wassail? I'm pretty sure drinking wassail on any day other than December 24th or 25th is hazardous to your health. Hey I'll bottoms up a glass of that hot spiced punch with the best of them but it better be while waiting to hear reindeer on my roof.

Speaking of reindeer. Have you seen reindeer at the zoo during their 'off season'--saddest lot of ruminants to ever walk the planet. They make the sloths look perky.

So a friend of friend of friend told me their sister's cousin's doula*read in the Huffington Post that It's a Wonderful Life and White Christmas were played on loop in Guantanamo Bay? I know I'd be singing like a canary before Clarence got his wings for the third time. But it's probably not true or else we would have caught Bin Laden by now. *[I try to keep six degrees of separation between myself and anyone that reads the Huffington Post].

All right I'll stop before someone a little more 'holly jolly' grinds up a poinsetta and leaves it in a fruit cake on my front porch. [I know, I know nobody actually eats fruit cake but the impending end to my semester tends to make me eat a lot of anything in large quantities. I can't sell back any of my books because most of them look like they were used to support a wobbly table in a soup kitchen.]

One Christmasey thing I do wish we would do more abundantly year round is give.*
Click the change button in the side bar and pledge today. If you listen carefully when you click the submit button you can hear the rumble of the Polar Express.

*Okay shameless manipulation of holiday guilt but it can't be worse than that Salvation Army bell.