Merry Christmas, dear reader!  I love Christmas as much as the next blackguard, but I don’t feel the need to decorate the outside of the house every Christmas.  It, quite simply, seems like a huge pain in the ass.  And for what?  The neighbors’ and other weirdos amusement?  I don’t particularly care for either weirdos or neighbors, so I don’t see the point.  Apparently, many of my neighbors feel differently.  This year, in particular, many of them have gone absolutely apeshit with their outdoor Christmas décor and lights.  When I say “apeshit,” I mean unironically using Clark Griswold as their inspiration and mentor.  Most of these projects have actual budgets…serious money is being spent on this garishness. My issues with this seasonal silliness are myriad, but I’ll just give you the top three:

1.  These are the lowlands of California, which is to say there is no such thing as a white Christmas.  It doesn’t snow here.  I’m old enough to remember the last time it did “snow” in this valley, and that was in 1976.  Since then, not a flake.  Because our governor is an incompetent ass who doesn’t understand even the most basic concepts of deforestation or successfully managing water resources, California is in a state of perpetual drought, regardless of how much rain falls in a given year, most people’s front yards look like the Arizona desert during Christmastime:
   dead lawn and patches of dirt.  Which makes oversized inflatable snowmen look absurdly out of place.  Traditional “winter” Christmas décor where there is no snow comes off as desperate and rather pathetic.
2. These overdecorated and hyperlit houses draw all manner of bridge and tunnel trash into the neighborhood.  There are, of course, no bridges or tunnels here, but you know what I mean: other desert-dwellers in desperate attempts to have something like a white Christmas but don’t have a budget set aside for a professionally designed lightshow drive around looking for other people’s ostentatious displays, which leads a lot of them to my street.  And they don’t do quick drive-bys… no, they drive slower than a parade and oftentimes completely stop and just park it in front of their favorite festooned houses.  This causes actual traffic at inordinate times on an otherwise quiet street.  This, in turn, causes dark states of piss off and anger amongst the various UPS, Amazon, and DoorDash drivers trying to make their way to my door.  “Fuck it, bro…you’re on your own…I’m 750 feet from your house and I haven’t moved for 20 minutes…you’re going to need to pick this shit up yourself,” is a common theme of messages sent to me from delivery drivers these past two weeks.  Then when I do leave the house after dark, I end up ruining multiple Christmases and possibly causing psychological trauma to scores of children who, wide-eyed and gaped-mouthed are enjoying staring at the millions of Christmas lights and various animated inflatable displays when their fragile little yuletide minds are suddenly forced to cope with some crazed and likely drunk writer yelling about traffic and calling their parents pig-fuckers and all sorts of bad and profane noise.  Nobody wants that.  So do us all a favor and stay home.
3. As glorious as many of these displays may be in the dark of night, in the morning light, they’re absolutely ghastly.  The only experience I can liken it to is stumbling out of a San Francisco rave at dawn, just as the drugs are wearing off, and you’re forced to go from sexy darkness that’s illuminated only by sexy lasers making even the most drug-addled revelers look good out into the brutal and excruciating dawn, where all your fellow partiers looks like hammered shit and the gorgeous girl you’ve been following around all night now looks like an animated corpse trying to find a ride home.  These yards that only hours before were cutting edge holiday light shows now look dead.  The lights are off, and the owners have turned off the air pumps that keep the inflatable displays inflated, and now they’re just flaccid, lifeless flaps of plastic laying across lawns and roofs like spent condoms tossed on the pavement in the high school parking lot the morning after prom.  It’s gross and depressing.  Which I believe are the exact sorts of feelings Christmas is meant to avoid.

I’m quite dubious about whether or not next Christmas will be in any way “normal,” but whatever’s going on, at least please consider toning down the outside lights and displays next year.  They vex me deeply and make the baby Jesus cry.

N.P.: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” – Gary Hoey

Even when I still believed that Santa Claus was an actual dude with an actual mailing address inside the Arctic Circle, with an actual toy shop at the same address staffed mostly by elves, blah blah blah, I felt, deep down in that dark and vacant space where my soul should have been, that Things Weren’t Right.
Even as toddlers, children understand that there are scary monsters [see The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim and that study where children were given rewritten versions of fairy tales with the scary monsters taken out, and the kids got all pissed off and attacked their teachers’ kneecaps].  Rugrats know that evil lurks, and they resent the hell out of patronizing adults who tell them otherwise.  I certainly did.  Which is why the unipolar morality of the Santa story never really sat well with me: goodness is ostensibly rewarded, but evil goes completely unpunished.  All year long, the promise of every materialistic dream a child may have coming true on Christmas morning is dangled in front of the child’s beady eyes on the condition of “good” behavior during the rest of the year.
I always assumed there was some kind of sliding scale of goodness vs. toys spectrum: if your behavior was superlative and Christ-like all year long, then you get absolutely everything on your list, and perhaps even a few bonus toys.  If you were a minimally decent person for, say, 8 months out of the year, but a bit of a prick the rest of the time, then you might only get a third of the things on your list.  But what of little Adolf and Osama?  What about the little kid who is an absolute bastard every goddamn day of the year?  What of him?  According to the Santa story, nothing.  Not a damn thing. Hell, Santa will even still come by your house: he’ll just leave a piece of coal.  So what?  Who cares? This means that some little fucker can run around terrorizing the neighborhood, lowering property values and ruining everybody’s lives all year long, and the only thing he has to worry about is maybe not getting as many toys as the Goody Two-Shoes next door?  Alll little Adolf has to do is stroll over to Goody’s on the 26th, when the little angel is playing with all of his benevolently hard-earned toys, whack him over the head with a board, take whatever toys he wants, and swagger back home.
No.  That’s just ludicrous.  It is unjust. And it is existentially unsound. There can be no light without darkness.  And there can be no goodness without evil.  That knowledge is innate in human children.  But in the Disneyfied, politically correct culture that is modern day America, apparently parents are afraid of damaging their little snowflakes’ eggshell psyches, We ask our teachers not to use red pen when grading papers, because red is the color of blood and there is an implied threat there.  We’re not going to keep score in little league games because the idea of someone winning necessitates that some lost, and the concept of losing at anything, even a baseball game, is far more than a human being should have to endure.  And oh God, the results are tragic.  Entire generations who cannot conjugate the verbs “to lose” or “to fail.”
I say Enough.  Ya basta!  I say that people in general, but children especially, are far heartier and more resilient than they are ever given credit for.  And it is with that in mind that I suggest that we hit reset and start celebrating Christmas properly.  Let us look back toward Europe, to where the Santa Claus story originated, to get the full story: the story of the Santa’s dark counterpart, Krampus.
If Santa Claus is a right jolly old elf, then Krampus is a bad-ass Christmas demon.  If old Saint Nick is benevolent generosity and reward, Krampus is divine retribution and vengeance.  Krampus is a very satanic-looking demon (I suppose all demons worth their horns are rather satanic-looking): a satyr (in the Roman tradition (as opposed to the Greek)), with massive horns and a bifurcated tail, who is draped in noisy chains and cow bells, and wields a collection of pointy sticks with which (get this) he beats all hell out of children who have been assholes during the previous year.  If children have committed more than the typically venial offenses associated with childhood, Krampus will not simply beat them with his sticks and chains, but will either dismember them, or simply drag them to hell, never to be seen again.  Sometimes Krampus just eats the goddamn kids right there in front of God and everybody.  And don’t think you can go running to Santa to save you from Krampus…no.  Krampus and Santa are good buddies.  Existential friends who enjoy happy hour at der biergarten together.
Krampus does not just molest and abuse vagrant children.  No.  When not dispensing yuletide justice to miscreants, Krampus enjoys goosing attractive women and licking their faces, a la Rick James on a good, crackful night.  Oh yes…Krampus is a straight up poon hound.  Unlike that grandfatherly twat Santa Claus, ever the family man, the Christmas demon crushes mad ass on the reg.  There is no Mrs. Krampus.  No need.  Krampus has game and he wants to fist your mother.  After he eats your soul.
Speaking of eating, don’t bother trying to placate Krampus with cookies and milk.  He cannot be plied with baked goods, and Krampus is notoriously lactose-intolerant.  You would be better off leaving whiskey and steak, but those will not likely work either.  To avoid the wrath of Krampus this night, there is only one path: The path of righteousness, and the avoidance of assholishness throughout the rest of the year.

N.P.: “What We Do” – Devo

Season’s greetings, dear readers!  Apologies for not having time for a proper post today, but I’m busy preparing for Krampus Nacht.
For those of you uncultured heathens who are blissfully unaware, Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure from Central European folklore who shows up every December 5th to scare the living shit out of rotten kids (and their shitty parents).  He’s like Santa Claus’ evil twin brother, if that twin brother had a goat’s head and carried a bundle of birch branches chains for whipping purposes. Festive, right?  Hell yes.
For me, this means procuring sufficient liquor in case Krampus happens to stop by for a break from thrashing recalcitrant children.  Like those little shits across the street.  They’re doomed, and their parents know it.  Over the weekend, they hit me up for tips on Krampus-proofing their house.  Fools.  The righteous vengeance of Krampus is unstoppable, inescapable.  But I felt obligated to tell them something, so I made some shit up.
First, there’s the traditional garlic on the windowsills – because everyone knows that Krampus hates garlic. Or is that vampires? Ah well, better safe than sorry. Next, there’s the strategic placement of fluffy pillows around the house. You know, to cushion the blow in case Krampus gets in and starts swinging those birch branches around.
Then there’s the all-important task of stocking up on comfort food. Because if you’re going to spend the night cowering in fear, you might as well do it with a tub of ice cream and a family-sized bag of chips.
And let’s not forget the most important part of Krampus-proofing: crafting the perfect ‘I’ve been a good boy/girl’ sign to hang on the front door. Because nothing says ‘please don’t whip me, Mr. Krampus’ quite like a brightly colored sign made with glitter glue and desperation.
Anyway, brave reader, so much for them.  Brace yourself: Krampus Nacht is tomorrow!

N.P.: “Till the Day I Die” – Halford

Happy Thanksgiving!

N.P.: “What We Need Is a Hero” – Alan Silvestri