Otis Redding - Merry Christmas Baby (1967)

Merry Christmas to all. May the new year bring you peace and joy.

Christmas parody letter 2012

(singing) “It came while I was drinking beer.”

Ho! Ho! Ho! To all my Yuletide friends, hope you’re having the Christmas jollies this holiday season. 25,000 twinkling lights on the ol’ Guy house, can’t say I don’t have the Christmas spirit. True, holidays can be a little stressful like when I was setting up the sleigh and reindeer in my lawn, broke into fits of rage scarier than Bing Crosby with a belt like when I punched the plastic Santa in the face. But with prayer and medication, I’ve redeemed myself & I’m spreading Christmas joy about the town like it’s reindeer pellets.

It’s been a lovely year. Maria (ain’t she the sexiest thing this side of Anne Romney?) has been busy manning the volunteer booth at the town Zen Grasshopper Festival, attending Chamber of Commerce luncheons for her job, participating in the Christian Women’s Secret Santa gift exchange at Church and sharing about 20 posts a day on fakebook from the Concerned Christian Conservatives for America.

She and her girlfriends had a bachelorette party for one of their peeps. White Russians, Hairy Virgins and Alabama Slammers. Crazier than the mosh pit at a Godsmack concert.

Our son, Max, is doing excellent in school. Playing trombone in his school band, (says he can make "high-pitched & low-pitched fart sounds") racking up AR (Acelerated Reading) points. It comes naturally. You know he was reading Goethe and Marquis de Sade when he was in kindergarten, didn’t you? He also carved a hunting weapon from a tree branch he cut down at a Cub Scout camp out. He plans to kill a Grizzly bear with it and earn a new badge. That’s my boy, always going the extra mile, always serving his community. Take last week for example. He and his scout pack sang Christmas carols to the residents of Lakewater Nursing Home. Max didn’t laugh too hard when his xbox-fiend friend Kristian sang the word “boobies” in the middle of Jolly Old St. Nicholas.

Then there’s our daughter Gabby. She is so artistic. She’s at the dining room table drawing right now as I write this (ha!) magnum opus. Maria taped a picture she drew in school of a snowman to the refrigerator. Guests can overlook its resemblance to a phallic symbol. Gabby is a girly girl, always coming home from school and changing into her “princess dresses.” Snow White, Cinderella, Belle from Beauty and the Beast – we’ve bought her the whole damn bunch. But she relishes her princess garb, her “princess movies,” “princess dolls” and Barbie dolls. She loves the two-story doll house we gave her last Christmas with a bathroom on both levels. For authenticity, she peed in one of the plastic toy toilets. Her brother discovered where that smell in her room was coming from --- three months after the fact.

And in other news, Maria’s aunt Mae had surgery due to Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). There were submucosal lesions in her body. Not good. Not good at all. Although GISTs occur most frequently in the stomach, Aunt Mae’s took place in her small intestine. In addition, GISTs can take root in the colon and rectum. The good news is Aunt Mae is doing well now. She even decorated her yard with a snowman, Santa and manger scene. Goes well with the tombstones, skeleton and grim reaper she still has up from Halloween.

My local mailperson Roger delivered to me a beautifully sweet package. It arrived just in time for me to wish the sender a merry Christmas, while thanking him profusely (and I mean as profusely as the sweat drenching from Elvis’s black Jim Morrison-esque leather suit on the ’68 Christmas special). I was in gratitude, you see, for this package contained a cherished possession – my iphone.

For three weeks, I was without my precious lifeline & thus I was bored when I had to poop. The last I remembered seeing the iphone was in the restroom of Toot’s Diner in Backwater, Okla. where I was playing Angry Birds.

Max's 5th grade class wrote letters to the kindergartners in which they forged the name, Santa Claus. It went well except for the girl in his class who was traumatized when they told her Santa didn’t really exist. No chance of Max having such a meltdown. He never believed. At 3-years-old, he declared Santa “Fake.” I, however, held out like his devastated classmate. Fourth, fifth grade  -- my friends all said Santa was bullcrap, but I was going to believe, dammit.

And turns out I was right. Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus. I caught him rummaging around our Christmas tree last year, said “take a load off, Annie.” We sat at the kitchen table, shot the breeze & had a drink together. Maybe two or three.

Maybe this year, you’ll kick it with Santa. Have some Jack and Coke, talk about zooming around the big wide world. (Readers who grew up in the Wichita area in the ‘70s, you know what I’m talking about.) Maybe you and the fat man will even roll a sweet Christmas Yule log. Hey, it’s even legal in a couple of states now. You'll probably get the munchies for some Christmas cookies and if you have cookies, you'll probably want some milk to go with them. And if Santa’s eyes become as red as his suit, it’s cool. He has a designated sleigh driver.

Merry Christmas,

J. Guy & family

P.S. I know I usually end my Christmas letters with something silly. This year – and I hope I only have to do this once --- I’m going to leave on a more heartfelt note. It’s a tumultuous, heartbreaking world, but don’t our children bring into it, a ray of hope? Our lives are made better and brighter because they’re here. Let’s work to make it a better world for them. For the departed children and brave teachers of Newtown, Conn., here is a Christmas video.