by Jen Mann
Copyright © 2015 by Jen Mann
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Photos from the personal collection of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mann, Jen.
Spending the holidays with people I want to punch in the throat : yuletide yahoos, ho-ho-humblebraggers, and other seasonal scourges / Jen Mann.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-345-54999-0 (paperback)—ISBN 978-0-8041-7629-3 (eBook)
1. Christmas—Humor. I. Title.
PN6231.C36M36 2014
818'.602—dc23 2015025901
eBook ISBN 9780804176293
Cover design: Joseph Perez
Snowflake pattern from istockphoto/Aleksandar Veljasevic
Cover image: (gingerbread man) © Epoxydude/Getty Images
randomhousebooks.com
v4.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
10 Things I Hate About the Holidays
Section One: Christmas Memories I’d Like to Forget
Before Toddlers & Tiaras There Was Me
The White Trash Dollhouse
Like a Neon Virgin in Guess Jeans and Swatch Watches
The Dreaded Annual Christmas Photo
Doesn’t Everyone Wrap Christmas Presents in Their Underwear?
Hey, Santa, Keep Your Yule Log to Yourself!
Section Two: Making My Own Christmas Memories (Note: They Still Suck)
Fa-Ra-Ra-Ra-Raa, Ra-Ra-Ra-Ra: My Christmas Story
Hoarder’s Delight
Overachieving Elf on the Shelf Mommies
Ho-ho-Horrendous
One Man’s Junk Is My Precious Children’s Gift
Wait. Who Is the Reason for the Season?
How Shopping With Me at Christmastime Is the Best Birth Control There Is
Sometimes It’s Hard to Tell the Difference Between a Home Invasion and an Overzealous Crew of Christmas Carolers
You Can Keep Your Cookies, I’m Just Here for the Booze
Suburban Moms’ Endless Christmas Conversation Loop
I Should Have Had a Damn Holiday System
Annual Christmas Letters: The Art of the Humblebrag
Section Three: Other Holidays (That Still Annoy Me), in No Particular Order
Why You Won’t Be Invited to Our Chinese New Year Party This Year, or Ever
Nice Halloween Costume. Was Skank Sold Out?
Thanksgiving Day Parades Suck When They’re Not in HD
My First and Last Mother’s Day Present
The Easter I Blew Gomer’s Mind
Author’s Note
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Jen Mann
About the Author
This book will make the perfect white-elephant gift at your office holiday party. It will no doubt help you to find “your people” instantly. You will quickly know if Gypsy at reception has a sense of humor and whether or not you should invite her to join your wine club—I mean book club. If Fritz in accounting doesn’t start laughing as soon as he sees the cover, then you know you should find a new place to work. But a word of caution: don’t give your boss this book. Most bosses don’t have a sense of humor, and it could be a bad move for you and your career. I can’t have that on my conscience.
I wrote this book because I come from a long line of Christmas overachievers on my mother’s side of the family. Her mother grew up on a farm in Canada with her six sisters. On Christmas Eve their father would put them to bed and tell them to stay put no matter what they heard. Then he’d go out to the barn, hitch up the horses to their sled, and drive all over the front yard of their farmhouse ringing sleigh bells. The little girls—who slept two and three to a bed—would quiver and giggle with excitement, believing that Santa had arrived.
In the morning they’d find sled tracks in the snow and half-eaten carrots strewn around the yard, and they’d believe in the magic for another year.
I’m convinced this Yuletide gene skipped my generation. Well, maybe not my whole generation—I have cousins who would argue with me on this point. But it skipped me, at least.
To help you better navigate the essays in this book, here’s a quick who’s who of some of the people you’ll encounter. I’m Jen. I’m a sarcastic, kind of bitchy, funny, sometimes offensive, middle-aged, tired, married mother of two who tends to say out loud (with as many profanities as possible) what everyone else is thinking. I have two kids: Gomer (age ten at the writing of this book) and Adolpha (age eight). Before you have a hissy fit and sit down to write me a nasty letter about my children’s horrible names, just stop. Of course those aren’t their real names.
Their real names are worse, but I can’t take the ridicule, so I just made up what I consider to be horrific names for my blog, People I Want to Punch in the Throat, and my books. Are you still writing that letter? Why? Because your kid’s name is Gomer and you take offense that I just called it “horrific”? Ugh. Actually, you know what? Go ahead, I don’t care. Write away. As long as you bought this book, you can bitch at me about anything you’d like.
I’m married to the Hubs. His name isn’t important; you can call him the Hubs, too. Everyone does. He’s a cheap bastard who can be a tad antisocial, but he treats me like gold, so he’s my lobster. Oh yeah, he’s Chinese and I’m Caucasian. Sometimes that information is good to know when you’re reading these essays.
I was raised by a professional Overachieving Mom (OAM) and my father, her enabler. When I was growing up, my dad encouraged my mom to stay home and follow her dreams of investing their retirement nest egg in her version of porn: crazy-ass expensive Santa Claus figurines and nativity sets. Hundreds of them. No joke. She has Santas that are baking cookies, decorating Christmas trees, and coming down chimneys, as well as one jogging in boxer shorts. She has nativity sets made of glass, pewter, and wood. One of her favorites is a six-pack of empty beer cans that were painted to resemble the holy family and the three wise men. She even has a few Santas holding mangers. (I just blew your mind, didn’t I? Yeah, because nothing says “Jesus is the reason for the season” like a Santa Claus figurine holding the baby Jesus.)
I have a younger brother I call C.B.—not his real name, either. (From here on out, you can just assume that every name you read in this book besides Jen has been changed. Jenni, sadly, is real.) He has an important real job in the real world and is a tad concerned that his boss might read this book. (As if his boss reads anything but Robb Report and Yachting Magazine!) Anyway, C.B. would like to remain as anonymous as possible just in case he decides to run for president someday or join a country club. He’s married to Ida and they have two kids, Sherman and Violet.
So, getting back to the theme of this book, when I was growing up my mother made sure that holidays were always an Event (with a capital E) for me and my brother. She made our stockings, she decorated her trees (yes, that’s plural, as in numerous trees) with themes like “Snowmen” and “Angels” and “Good Tree—Don’t Touch” and “Crappy Family Tree Where I Hang All of the Homemade Ornaments the Kids Made” (I don’t think she really calls her tree that, but that’s what I call it when I’m helping her decorate it). She went to extreme measures to keep us believing. When I was nine or ten, I was starting to doubt the existence o
f Santa, so she hired some old guy with a red suit and a beard to stop by our house on a Sunday afternoon a week or so before Christmas. I’m sure she thought I’d buy his routine and continue to believe for another year or so. I remember that day distinctly. I was in my room looking out my window when I saw him pull up in front of our house in a beat-up red pickup truck. He checked his teeth in the mirror on the back side of his sun visor, picked his nose, smoothed his beard, and spit his gum out the truck window. He threw on his red hat and sauntered up to our front door. Any ounce of belief I’d had prior to that went out my bedroom window. There was no way this guy was legit. I don’t know what my mom spent, but she should have demanded a refund.
It’s not my family’s fault, however, that I ended up so grumpy during the holidays. It’s not like I’ve had to share a turkey with a drunk uncle or had a teenage cousin who said, “Please pass the potatoes, I’m pregnant” during a Yuletide meal. So while we might not be fully dysfunctional, we are a bit…odd, as my mother likes to say. The holidays have always been a sort of a balancing act for us. On one side I have my mom’s family. My mom and her sister, my aunt Ruby, make holiday decorating a competitive Olympic sport, where second place is first place for losers. Their brothers do things like send me the same gift every year because they can’t remember what they gave me last year and give their wives cash to go shopping at the day-after-Christmas sales so they can get “exactly what they want.” On my dad’s side of the family I have Jewish relatives who decorate Hanukkah bushes and wish me a merry Christmas while stuffing my hands with gelt. I wish them a happy Hanukkah and pocket that dough.
With all of this bah-humbuggery, it’s no real surprise that I ended up writing a book titled Spending the Holidays with People I Want to Punch in the Throat. It’s not that I hate the holidays; I just despise the nonsense that goes along with them. I don’t know what it is, but as soon as “Jingle Bells” starts playing on the radio (on November 1!), the Overachieving Moms start raising that homemade-candy-cane bar and it drives me crazy. I decided years ago that I was done trying to get over that bar. I don’t pose my family in matchy-matchy outfits for a picture that no one except my mother will keep. Although I look like someone who likes cookies, I rarely attend a cookie exchange unless I know there will be alcohol. No one in my neighborhood is jealous of my Christmas lights display. No one lines up for miles to see my pitiful, barely twinkling lights thrown haphazardly over a couple of bushes. And I am always the mom who on December 2 stops remembering to move her Elf on the Shelf. No, I am quite happy ducking under that candy-cane bar with my instant hot cocoa and store-bought cookies. I like buying my presents online so I don’t have to fight the crowds of holiday shoppers mainlining Christmas cheer and pumpkin-spiced lattes.
It used to be just Christmas that brought out this madness, but now it’s creeping into other holidays as well. My mother decorates for Halloween, Easter, and the Fourth of July. My kids’ classmates get bicycles from the Easter Bunny and throw half-birthday parties. And lately I’m hearing about some madness called a Switch Witch. She’s another damn doll. This one takes all of your Halloween candy and leaves presents instead. Oh great. Just what I need. Another damn magical doll to remind me what a terrible mother I am.
It pains my mother greatly that I can barely tolerate the holidays, but she is thrilled to know that I am raising a future Christmas fanatic. My daughter, Adolpha, is like the daughter my mother never had. She has not one but three miniature Christmas trees in her room. Yes, you read that right. I wrote “trees,” but hold on. I also wrote “miniature,” so that makes it better. Except that they’re each three feet tall. That’s nine feet of trees in one room! It’s kind of ridiculous, I know. Her trees sport themes like “Ooh La La, Paris” (pronounced “Paree,” with pink poodles and silver Eiffel Towers), “Fancy Disco Balls” (you know, jewel-toned mirrored ball ornaments), and “Pink Snowflakes” (pretty self-explanatory). Every year I make my mother go through her hundreds of boxes of Christmas decor and purge at least ten items. Those ten items never end up in the trash or the donate pile; they always end up in Adolpha’s room. She’s like a Christmas pack rat. She sees something shiny, and she grabs it and squirrels it away under her bed or in the back of her closet. Over the years she has amassed enough stuff for a fourth tree whose only theme could be described as “Grandma’s Cast-offs.” My guess is, this year my mom will buy that fourth tree for her.
And I will let her. I might not enjoy all of the decorating and the exhausting schedules that people try to keep during the holidays, but Adolpha loves it. She’s taking my mom’s old decorations because she’s the sentimental one. It takes so little time for me to get her trees out of the attic so she can decorate them with weird little felt mice in Santa hats or bears dressed like baby Jesus (yeah, besides Santa holding baby Jesus, my mom has a weird Christmas animal fetish thing going on). Adolpha is the family historian who will carry on the tradition of being an overachiever, and someday when I’m old and my parents are gone, I will visit Adolpha’s house so I can remember.
Family Christmas photo 1986. Between the awful perm and the braces, it’s amazing I had anything to smile about that year. No wonder my eyes are closed.
I am sure if you pressed me, I could come up with a few things I like about the holidays, but this book isn’t about what I like, now is it? Maybe that will be my next book. Ha! As if I could come up with that many pleasant things to say. Nah, I think I’ll just stick to what I do best: punch lists.
Pumpkin-flavor everything. Pumpkin lattes start showing up in August, and then it just snowballs from there. I don’t even like pumpkin in a pie, but no one wants to eat a pumpkin Popsicle.
Douchey dads who can’t take their kids trick-or-treating without pulling a wagon of beer behind them. What is the deal? This is a pretty easy job and isn’t very stressful. It takes a couple of hours to walk through the neighborhood, wave to the person at the door, and yell something like, “Anything good for me? Yuk, yuk, yuk.” Why do these dads feel the need to be hammered before they take on this job?
Shopping for gifts. I am not a thoughtful shopper. I’d love to give everyone a gift card to Target or Amazon and call it a day, but I’ve been told that’s not really fun for people to open on Christmas morning. (Side note to my family: I think those are great gifts. Feel free to give me a gift card anytime you’d like.) Another problem is that everyone on my list already has everything they want and/or need, or I can’t afford what they really want. For instance, the Hubs would like a new watch. Easy, right? Not so much. A Timex will not do for this man. He would like a two-thousand-dollar watch. Gomer would like a four-hundred-dollar Lego set, and Adolpha would appreciate half of the American Girl store. It’s not just them. I’ve got my eye on an eight-hundred-dollar Herman Miller Aeron chair that I’m pretty sure would help me write a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.
The events. The holidays are a time to gather with friends and family. Everyone hosts a cookie exchange or a Christmas party or a special dinner, not to mention the winter parties and the concerts at school you’ve got to find time for. It’s funny, no one wants to hang out with me in June, but I’m booked from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. No wonder people are depressed when the holidays are over! You’re the belle of the ball all winter, but as soon as Valentine’s Day comes no one wants to see your face again until Halloween.
The food. I have a love/hate relationship with holiday fare. It’s so damn good, but it’s also so damn bad. I convince myself that eating twenty chocolate-covered peanut butter balls is perfectly fine because I only get them “once a year.” What other time of the year is it acceptable to sit down to a five-course meal and then eat the leftovers a couple of hours later with a piece of pie on the side? Every party has delicious food to stuff your face with. I’m sure there’s a veggie tray in the mix somewhere, but I never see it. Plus, who wants a celery stalk when you can have chocolate at every holiday celebration from Halloween to Easter?
Anyone who gets
offended if they aren’t wished the proper holiday. “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Hanukkah,” “Joyous Kwanzaa,” “Feliz Navidad,” “Wonderful Winter Solstice.” Whatever. At least someone took the time out of their day to say “Have a great holiday season” to you. There is no need to be a dick. You don’t have to get your hackles up because you don’t celebrate whatever holiday they’re wishing you. Just say thank you, asshole.
Christmas music everywhere. I’m certain there are more than fifteen Christmas songs, but it sure doesn’t feel like it when you hear the same damn ones everywhere you go. It also annoys me that stores start playing them in October. I guess I kind of understand playing Christmas music in retail stores, because it’s a subliminal message to get people motivated to start their holiday shopping, but there are some places it really doesn’t make sense. For instance, I do not need, nor do I want, to hear “Away in a Manger” when I’m pumping gas. I have to fill up my tank regardless of the season. It’s not like listening to holiday music will make me say, “Ooh, it’s Christmastime, I think I need to upgrade to premium gas today. A little holiday splurge!”
Bell ringers who hound you. Hey, dipshit, I gave when I went into the store. Don’t look for me to give on the way out, too.
Kids home on winter break. This is another love/hate one. Each year, come December I have visions of the four of us decorating the house, baking cookies, and making homemade gifts for our friends, our family, and the neighbors. Then I wake up on the first day of winter break and the kids are fighting with each other and whining for television and food. We try to decorate the tree, but their “help” just creates more fighting and stress, because they’re moving so slowly and I just want it to be done already. We never bake, because none of us can make a cookie that anyone would want to eat. Adolpha and I can work in the craft room for hours, but Gomer always finishes his projects in fifteen minutes and then complains he’s bored. And the Hubs refuses to join in on any of the memory making, choosing instead to take a nap.