With Christmas (otherwise known as Hallowe’en Junior around our household) only a few scant weeks away, we at Choosy Beggars have turned our eye towards having an orderly, organized and low-stress holiday seaso– ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaawe nearly got that out with a straight face.
Let’s face it: December is a month full of the parties you’re dying to go to, the parties you’d rather die than go to, shopping, decorating, un-decorating, re-decorating, baking, eating, cooking, drinking, gifting, re-gifting, and maybe sleeping in there somewhere (perhaps, maybe). What’s that, you say? You have your regular life to live in there somewhere too? Then sit back, relax, and let the Choosy Beggars help you through the Holidays.
Week 1: December 1 – December 5
- As the first official week of the holiday season, enthusiasts can now begin to decorate their houses and office workspaces with abandon, and skeptics can just shut the hell up for a few weeks about consumerism, already.
- Have you gone out with your family to choose your live tree yet? Oh good, great job. It’s going to die long before Christmas, leaving a wretched spine and heap of needles for your children to find and your pets to choke on. God, what is wrong with you?
- Office potlucks are a great opportunity for co-workers to share healthy alternatives to the calorie-rich holiday fare traditionally offered. So let everyone else bring that hippie crap to the party, while you win friends with something made of peanut butter and a lot of chocolate.
Week 2: December 6 – 12
- Hanging lights from your roof, eaves or trees can be hazardous! Make sure your neighbors know you’re a real man by performing the task entirely alone, with a 30 year-old ladder no less than 2 feet too short for the job. Bonus points if it’s snowing, and super bonus points if your wife doesn’t find out until you’ve fallen down at least once.
- Shopping for gifts online is a great way to cross many people off of your gift list quickly — particularly when you discover how much it costs just to ship a friggin’ tee shirt to Canada, and decide a Christmas card will cover it this year.
- It’s the middle of the month, which means your holiday infusions should be ripe and ready to go! A jumbo Mason jar full of Apple Pie or Pumpkin-Spiced vodka makes an excellent gift, assuming that you have the willpower to let it escape your grasp.
Week 3: December 13 – 19
- Hiding gifts around the house is a great way to make sure the more inquisitive members of your family won’t find out what you got them this year. It also guarantees a lovely surprise the following spring, when you stumble across the presents you forgot you stowed behind the TV set while hiding Easter Eggs.
- Get your pets into the Holiday spirit by dressing them in festive clothing and taking their picture! Sharing these images with your loved ones and co-workers will help them to put your misery into sharp relief while they plan your intervention.
- Christmas is the perfect time to welcome children into your home. Make sure there’s at least one cookie the greedy little buggers won’t gobble up by preparing a treat better suited to adult tastes, like espresso mole shortbread.
Week 4: December 20 – 26
- With Christmas Eve on a Thursday and Christmas on a Friday this year, you’ll have one of the shortest weeks of the year to be productive. Eh, the hell with it.
- Enjoy one of the great opportunities for decadent appetizers with a French onion and truffle oil soup. They’ll love the rich flavors; you’ll love that you covertly fed everyone organ meat. It’s win-win!
- Christmas (everywhere): Oh, just enjoy it. Drink wine. Eat bird. Have pie. Get fat. January is boring, and you can always exercise while you’re trapped behind mountains of snow.
Week 5: December 27 – 31
- Boxing Week (Consumerland): Boxing Day sales offer excellent bargains as retailers liquidate their Christmas inventory. So now that you’ve accumulated a mountain of holiday debt, why not go the extra mile and extend into a mountain range?
- Be sure to build a safe New Year’s Eve plan: so, in between dressing up nicely, overpaying for an event venue, eating mediocre banquet food and drinking 3rd-tier liquor, ensure that you wait several hours in the cold for a taxi home. Have fun everyone!
- Or hey, there’s nothing like a good stay-at-home party. We may just have a few cocktail recipes, here and there.
Similar Posts:
- Choosy Beggars Monthly Calendar – November
- Choosy Beggars Monthly Calendar – January
- Choosy Beggars Monthly Calendar – March
- Choosy Beggars Monthly Calendar – February
- Choosy Beggars Monthly Calendar – October
Heh. This weekend is when we go poach/steal our tree from a vacant lot across town. It’s super fun to take a few swigs from the flask, don headlamps and stumble across the muskeg (swamp). Between the liquor, darkness, and adrenaline from thievery we always end up with what could only be described as Charlie Brown’s Tree’s ugly cousin.
But. Tradition.
Jacquie – never think of it as poaching. You’re simply LIBERATING those trees. When my inner Libertine gets freed, from time to time, alcohol may also be a factor. Or boredom. Or hobby. Hey, sometimes you just have to set a bit of the wicked free….
I just can’t get over how pissed off that kitteh looks. I mean, tortoiseshell cats always look kind of irritable, but she looks extra-cranky. It’s the hat. But she’s very pretty.