Things to Do Before Christmas Swallows You Whole
Christmas Eve is one sleep away and I’ve made a list. Not a shopping list. More of a mission brief—ten things to get done before the year collapses entirely into obligation and gravy.
One: snort cocaine off a family member. The specific body part is a personal choice; the potential outcome, reportedly, is death, which gives the whole enterprise a satisfyingly dramatic arc for the festive season. Two: mix the last of the Mexican tequila with whatever cheap orange juice is in the fridge and an energy drink. It’ll taste like battery acid filtered through a candy cane, but it’ll accomplish what needs accomplishing in under an hour, and isn’t that basically the holiday spirit? Three: strap novelty reindeer antlers to the dog. The dog doesn’t want them. That’s the second half of why it’s funny.
Four: sit through three full hours of your drunk uncle’s social commentary without interrupting. Let him finish every sentence. He’s been carrying this particular speech since the early nineties and he deserves the floor. Then put your arms around him. Cry a little. He’s not entirely wrong about everything. Five: buy yourself a companion—there are services. Six: have a T-shirt made that reads "I didn’t attend a single Christmas market this year and I’m proud of it." Wear it to dinner. Watch faces. But only if it’s actually true—wearing it under false pretenses is its own category of sin.
Seven: eat less. Caloric restriction apparently keeps the brain younger, and I’d like mine to last another few decades at minimum. Eight: fly to Sweden, find work, marry a model, raise five children on a property with too much land and not enough insulation, grow old together in the good kind of way, return home after forty-seven years, act like you just stepped out for cigarettes. Nine: only have sex with organically farmed vegetables—everything else is bad for the environment, and honestly for you personally too. Ten: postpone New Year’s Eve by twelve months. Just push the whole thing. Nobody’s ready anyway.