Today was officially the final day of the Christmas season.  Throw Out Your Stupid Tree Day was a giant success.  This is also the day I meditate on the most recent Christmas past while peeling little bits of deleted Scotch Tape from my haggard carpet fibers.  Tree Day marks a return to reality and the culmination of all things 2009.  It also begins a two month period of extracting pine needles from my underwear, but I digress.

Molly hates me at Christmas time because I am as joyful as a King James Only street preacher, who just got out of an AA meeting.  I refer to things by their most truthful names: the Xmas tree, the Xmas party, the Xmas presents and of course YOUR family.  I do this with a greasy, self-satisfied smile on my face.

This year I was asked to pray before the Christmas meal, and why not, seeing as I have some track record of offering public prayers.  I deferred.  If I had accepted the invitation, it might have sounded like this:

Dear God,

Thanks for coming to earth so that we could spend ridiculous amounts of money one month every year.  We have tried to honor you by compromising all of our values this month.  We have done our part to put Citibank back in the black.  Please, please do yours.  If we happen to accidentally do anything that should honor the birth of Jesus, please strike that person with a tiny but fatal lightening bolt so that at least one of us might have some shot at making heaven.

Sincerely,

4223 5968 2235 9920 (not my real credit card number, so go ahead and try to order stuff with it.)

I mean, Amen.

Today is different.  I am genuflecting all over the carpet, muttering things for which I will later repent.  I weave the pine needles into an organic, highly-combustible cilice (you know, the belt of punishment wrapped around your thigh made famous by the DaVinci Code).  It is a long day of penance.  Lest you think that I am speaking in a manner too spiritual, mostly I am talking about my poor wife Molly, who endures my nasty mood every year.

I think I would really like Xmas, if it wasn’t supposedly about Jesus.  I threw out all the Christmas cards today, the ones that say, “Jesus is the Reason for the season.”  Right.  Jesus is the reason I went into debt.  Jesus is the reason I hope you like what I bought you from a store.  Come on.  Stop blaming him, he’s just a baby this time of year.

Tomorrow Molly will likely begin speaking to me again.  I am looking forward to it.  Graciously, I am relieved of setting the population straight for another 300 days or so.

(In case you are wondering, I am not as grumpy as I seem.)