Merry Titmas!

On Christmas Day, I like to recycle a post that I did in 2008. Here it is.

Why write a new Christmas Day post when I wrote the perfect one in 2008? Here is “Happy Holiday, Goyim!” again, with a new, working version of the video and a couple of other updated links:

Every December 25, I get into the holiday spirit by reminiscing about an idiot I knew in my freshman year of college. This self-described born-again Christian once went into a rant about the secularization of Christmas as symbolized by the use of “Xmas.” She thought that evil secular people had X’d the “Christ” out of Christmas. She didn’t know that the Greek letter “X” — the first letter in the Greek spelling of “Christ” — has been used as shorthand for “Christ” for centuries. No one X’d the Christ out of Christmas; X IS Christ, for Jebus’s sake! (If you want more info about the X factor, here’s an Xian’s explanation for fellow Xians.)

Anyway, here some things I wish I could say to my long-ago acquaintance in honor of the holiday.

1. It’s bad to be stupid.
2. It’s worse to be stupid about your own religion’s history while trying to convert an easily irritated atheist of Jewish origin.
3. If your God disapproved of gays, He wouldn’t have allowed that hairstylist to give you the most unflattering hairdo since Medusa’s. That haircutting queen was actually the hand of God punishing you for your homophobia!
4. Merry Titmas!

One of the only things more horrible to look upon than my classmate’s 1985 revenge-of-Harvey-Milk hairdo is this Xmas music video by my almost-husband Paul McCartney. I know you will want to stop watching and scrub your eyes with a Brillo pad after Paul serenades himself at 1:54, but I urge you to stick it out to 3:04 to see the giant, exploding present flying through the air.

UPDATED 2015 TO ADD: For some reason, I didn’t realize that the Shins did a cover of “Wonderful Christmastime” a couple of years ago. I just started hearing it everywhere I went this year. I kind of like it. Do I owe my almost-husband an apology?