The new year brings a spate of awards shows over in Hollywood, but i’m sure that if the movie cameras were pointed at the living rooms of North Americans everywhere on Christmas morning, there’d be some serious hardware to hand out.

(Incidentally, “hardware” is a word you can use instead of “trophy” or “award” when you want to sound absolutely awesome.)

To lift a phrase from Stephen Leacock: when i open presents, i get rattled. Emotions are high, tensions are tense, and your hands tremble while you tear through that wrapping paper while you try hard not to cut an egg nog fart. It’s uncomfortable. The person who handed you the gift invariably wears an excited expression that requires you - nay, defies you to enjoy the gift. They wear this expression whether the gift is a harem of 72 cuddly virgin princesses or sports socks from the local athletics store. It’s unfair. In a perfect world, their expression should be proportionate to the actual quality of the gift. But it’s not so.

No. Instead, you find yourself gnawing through layers of ribbon and tape, clawing past bows and tags and repeating pictures of snowmen and santas, wondering what could possibly be so great as to strike the gift-giver that moony-eyed sublime stupor. Finally, there it is - it’s shoes. And in that moment, before God and men, you conjure up a swell of elation and clapping a squealy gasp of relief and joy that, by some unwritten and needless contract, must either match or completely outdo the quivering, pregnant expectation on the face of the gift-giver.

i’ve found myself in this situation too many times. “Oh boy - Birkenstocks!!” i shouted at the top of my lungs, wondering why on Earth my then-girlfriend Nutjob had decided to buy me a pair of yuppie sandals. “Um … the gift is inside the shoebox” she said cattily. Awkward. i mumbled something dismissive and set about opening the shoebox. She drove the Embarrassment Knife deeper. “Birkenstocks cost, like, over a hundred dollars, you know?” “Uh-huh.” “So … so WHY would i buy you a pair of Birkenstocks?” (frantically opening the box) “Oh, look - it’s a CD and a bag of your hair. Hooray! Let’s just forget it, ok?”

This year, i decided to do away with the whole torrid charade and dole out honest reactions to my benefactors, while keeping my own expectations low as they opened gifts from me. If i opened a gift and it sucked, a simple “thank you” and a frown would do, with perhaps a sarcastic eye-rolling or a playful punch in the groin. No need to be a damned phony about it. If the gift sucks, you know it. You know when you give sucky gifts. i gave a couple of sucky gifts this year. So what? Big deal. The pain and tingling in your crotch wears off, and everyone has a happy Christmas.

With that out of the way, though, the other problem i faced was with people who said “ok, now don’t go crazy this Christmas, because i’m not going crazy with your gifts this year.” Ok. Fine. In retrospect, the correct response to that is to go crazy. Buy a big assload of presents for that person, because they’ll screw you. Both my mother and my wife told me not to “go crazy,” so i didn’t. i found a few nice gifts that they would enjoy, wrapped them up, and arranged them pleasantly beneath the tree. They, meanwhile, rented a backhoe to dig me out of the avalanche of obscenely numerous gifts totalling hundreds of millions of dollars and hours spent shopping until i wept with shame. Why would you do that to someone? If you say you’re not going to “go crazy,” you should keep your word and “stay sane.” It’s a lot better than “Don’t go crazy - oh, and by the way … MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHEAPASS!” It’s not a nice feeling. i can’t even touch my presents now. They are ruined for me. The very texture of them reminds me of my humanity and brokenness.

Once again, i’ve managed to turn the sport of the upper class, world-wealthy elite into something ugly and hateful. i believe this makes it a series. Look forward to my future journal entries disparaging the joys of having a well-paying job and sitting down to a dinner table full of food.

Listen up, developing nations: embrace your abject poverty! You never had it so good!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

My keyboard is broken, and it’s very traumatizing. How am i expected to dispense my chewy nougats of truth to you people when my most important communication tool is on the fritz?

Here’s what i have for you today: it’s a fine point, but there’s a very ridiculous Christmas song lyric out there that i feel the need to draw your attention to.

The Little Drummer Boy, while not dogmatically accurate, is a nice little story of a poor boy who visits the baby Jesus and has nothing material to offer him, but instead plays his “best for him” on his drum, and the baby Jesus smiles. In other words, the baby Jesus likes to rock out like the rest of us. This is all fine and pleasant, and i’m willing to forgive the fact that in most recordings of the song, the titular musician sounds as though he’s playing a marching drill on a bugle corps snare, but whatever.

Mary nodded
Pa rum pum pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time
Pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him
Pa rum pum pum
I played my best for Him
Pa rum pum pum pum

We, as a society, should rather take issue with the lyric “the ox and lamb kept time.” Has anyone else noticed this? It baffles me. i can’t imagine what the author meant. It’s not a very old song, so i’ve ruled out the possibility that there’s some olde English action happening in those words that implies the animals in the stable held the moment at the present time, making everyone feel the weight of the moment at the present time. No - there’s none of that happening here. “Keeping time,” to me, means regulating the beat. Does that - could that - mean that the ox and lamb were somehow .. .what? Tapping their hooves? Nodding their heads to the beat so the little drummer boy could pa rum pa pum pum out his tune at 120 beats per minute? How does that make any sense? And .. argh! It frustrates me to no end.

Forget for a moment the fact that the ox and lamb are animals. Why is anyone but the drummer keeping time? He’s the damned drummer. If anyone in the band is supposed to be keeping time, it’s the guy hitting things with sticks. i.e. the ox would be on sax and the lamb would be - i dunno - playing the vibraphone or something, and the little drummer boy would be keeping them all on the beat. Problem number one, lyricist.

Now forget forgetting the fact that the ox and lamb are animals. They’re animals. How is the lamb supposed to hold vibraphone mallets anyway? Why ..wh … ? It eats at me, people. It really does. i mean, i know baby Jesus is magical and all … is the lyricist implying that the baby Jesus somehow imbued the ox and lamb with the spiritual gift of rhythym so they could keep the little drummer boy from screwing up during his big moment? Is that what’s being required of us, as a listening audience, to believe?

Or is the lyricist a trouble-maker? Now we’re getting down to it. People listen to lyrcis so seldom that i don’t find it far-fetched that a lyricist could slip in a completely retarded line like “the ox and lamb did the Charleston”, as long as it was sung slowly and beautifully like all the other lyrics. Have we been played this whole time? i don’t know exactly how long the song’s been out, but it’s certainly been around longer than i have. How long has this lyric slipped under the radar? Are the ox and lamb hiding out in other beautiful Christmas songs windsurfing or something and no one’s noticed that either?

Silent night,
Holy night
All is calm
all is bright.
Round yon virgin
mother and child
holy infant so tender and mild
sleep in heavenly peace
sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night,
Holy night,
ox and lamb
put money on a cock fight

IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING??? Dear readers, i encourage you to scour your Charlotte Church Christmas albums and search for these insidious subliminal messages featuring the ox and the lamb engaging in all manner of unnatural exploits. It’s simply not Christian.

In my brief search for the Little Drummer Boy lyrics, i came across another blogger beating me to the punch with a similar exposé . In my creative defense, the idea struck me independantly long before i stumbled across her entry. It just goes to show that mischievous Christmas song lyricists can’t pull the hoof-tapping wool over all our eyes.

Or, if we’re feeling Christmassy and charitable, we can downgrade our assessment of this lyric from “treasonous” to “dumb”.

While i was walking through the bookstore looking for Christmas presents, i saw a book out of the corner of my eye in the Food and Lifestyle section: “The Entertaining Bible.” i thought Good. Someone’s finally decided to spice it up a bit.