by Rick Ladd

The year is leaving us, my friends. The end is in sight as the months barrel past in a blur. The weather changes, you dress up for Halloween, and before you know it...someone is smiling broadly and saying something ridiculous like "Tis The Season!"

Tis the season? Never has a term that was intended to inspire joy and holiday cheer had such a reverse affect! Just the idea of shopping and spending too much money while I'm drunk on eggnog gives me a phantom hangover of regret. It doesn't matter that I do it every year. I'm not about to start learning from my mistakes now. I've made it through this alive and without any major scars so far, so why try to be smart now?

Well, I have learned some lessons through the years. I've learned that I should only put half as much rum in the eggnog, eat only half the food I feel like eating, spend half the money I think I should, and start my shopping twice as early as I usually do. Thanks to anti-anxiety pills, alcoholics anonymous, and the Internet; I can make all of these goals happen.

Do you know what else is terrible? Women! Okay, not women exactly, but shopping for women is a veritable hell on earth. If it weren't for Christmas t-shirts, I probably would have run away and joined the circus by now. I hear they don't celebrate Christmas at the circus. I don't even think about what I'm buying the ladies in my family anymore. I just get on the Web and buy any t-shirt I can find with some reindeer, snowmen, Santas, or whatever on it. The chicks in my family go crazy for that stuff. Christmas t-shirts are like heroin for women in their 30's.

Once this secret was discovered, I went nuts with joy. I don't have to think about what I'm buying these insane people at all any more. I can pretty much just buy these Christmas t-shirts at random, because all of the t-shirts that I've bought have been big hits. All I have to do is get on the Internet, buy Christmas t-shirts for the insane asylum we call my family, and I'm practically done by Thanksgiving.

Take it from a certified Christmas genius: you just can't go wrong with the perfect combination of Christmas t-shirts and women with dogs, kids, cats, or all three. If people followed my advice, there would be about 1,000 fewer fatal stabbings during the Holiday season. - 39969