“It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come.”
Tag Archives: holidays
Merry Christmas 2022!
Filed under News
Happy Thanksgiving 2022!
“Gratitude can transform common days into Thanksgiving, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.”
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Merry Christmas 2021!
“Let’s be naughty and save Santa the trip.”
Gary Allan
“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”
Maya Angelou
“In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah‘ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’ or (to the atheists) ‘Look out for the wall!’”
Dave Barry
“It’s always consoling to know that today’s Christmas gifts are tomorrow’s garage sales.”
Milton Berle
“Christmas is a baby shower that went totally overboard.”
Andy Borowitz
“The main reason Santa is so jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live.”
George Carlin
“Christmas, here again. Let us raise a loving cup; Peace on Earth, goodwill to men, and make them do the washing up.”
Wendy Cope
“Thank you, Stockings, for being a long flammable piece of fabric people like to hang over a roaring fireplace.”
Jimmy Fallon
“A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”
Garrison Keillor
“There are three stages of man: he believes in Santa Claus; he does not believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.”
Bob Philips
Filed under News
Creepy Christmas Photos 2021
Silent night,
Holy night,
All is…CREEPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Once again, my lovely readers, the yuletide season is upon us, and while most intact families celebrate the wholesomeness of the holidays, we must understand that some people just don’t fully comprehend what it’s supposed to mean.
Herein lies a batch of odd Christmas photos where the subjects just couldn’t get into the spirit or hope their placement on a sex offender’s registry would go unnoticed.
Filed under Curiosities
Merry Christmas 2020
“Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.”
Victor Borge
“There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.”
Robert Staughton Lynd
“I get a little behind during Lent, but it comes out even at Christmas.”
Frank Butler
“Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and receipts for all major purchases.”
Bridger Winegar
“I haven’t taken my Christmas lights down. They look so nice on the pumpkin.”
Winston Spear
“At Christmas, tea is compulsory. Relatives are optional.”
Robert Godden
“The principal advantage of the non-parental lifestyle is that on Christmas Eve you need not be struck dumb by the three most terrifying words that the government allows to be printed on any product: ‘Some assembly required.’”
John Leo
“Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.”
Kin Hubbard
“I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, ‘Toys not included.’”
Bernard Manning
“What I like about Christmas is that you can make people forget the past with the present.”
Don Marquis
“A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”
Garrison Keillor
“I love Christmas. I receive a lot of wonderful presents I can’t wait to exchange.”
Henny Youngman
“That’s the true spirit of Christmas; people being helped by people other than me.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“Do give books – religious or otherwise – for Christmas. They’re never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.”
Lenore Hershey
“For Christmas this year, try giving less. Start with less attitude. There’s more than enough of that in the world as it is – and people will usually just give it back anyway!”
Anne Bristow
Aren’t we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas. You know, the birth of Santa?”
Matt Groening
“Let me see if I’ve got this Santa business straight. You say he wears a beard, has no discernible source of income and flies to cities all over the world under cover of darkness? You sure this guy isn’t laundering illegal drug money?”
Tom Armstrong
“Who’s the bane of Santa’s life? The elf and safety officer.”
Catherine Tate
“Santa Claus wears a Red Suit, he must be a communist. And a beard and long hair, must be a pacifist. What’s in that pipe that he’s smoking?”
Arlo Guthrie
“Nothing says holiday like a cheese log.”
Ellen DeGeneres
“Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.”
Richard Lamm
“Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.”
Johnny Carson
“I bought my brother some gift wrap for Christmas. I took it to the gift wrap department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know when to stop unwrapping.”
Steven Wright
“Be careful with drinking this Christmas. I got so drunk last night I found myself dancing in a cheesy bar… or, as you like to call it, delicatessen.”
Sean Hughes
“Christmas sweaters are only acceptable as a cry for help.”
Andy Borowitz
“People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces properly if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December.”
Ogden Nash
“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.”
Roy L. Smith
“A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.”
John B. Priestly
“Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.”
Fanny Wright
“Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.”
Dave Berry
“Next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.”
Frank McKinney Hubbard
“One good thing about Christmas shopping is it toughens you for the January sales.”
Grace Kriley
“The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.”
Jay Leno
“There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime. Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them.”
P.J. O’Rourke
“Ever wonder what people got Jesus for Christmas? It’s like, ‘Oh great, socks. You know I’m dying for your sins right? Yeah, but thanks for the socks! They’ll go great with my sandals. What am I, German?’”
Jim Gaffigan
“Every year, Christmas gets longer and longer, and you don’t care, do you? Every year, you just take more of the calendar for yourself. How long does it take you people to shop? It’s beyond belief! It’s insane! When I was a kid, Halloween was Halloween, and Santa wasn’t poking his ass into it!”
Lewis Black
“I’ve had this look for about a year. I usually grow this beard out around Christmas. I like to go to malls dressed as Jesus, and I like to then walk around the mall and go, ‘No! No! This wasn’t what it was supposed to be about, people!’ Then if there’s a Santa at the mall, I walk up to him and say, ‘Listen, fat man, you’re just a clown at my birthday party.’”
Marc Maron
“I set a personal record on Christmas. I got my shopping done three weeks ahead of time. I had all the presents back at my apartment, I was halfway through wrapping them, and I realized, ‘Damn, I used the wrong wrapping paper.’ The paper I used said, ‘Happy Birthday.’ I didn’t want to waste it, so I just wrote ‘Jesus’ on it.”
Demetri Martin
“Christmas: it’s the only religious holiday that’s also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services, and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on the true meaning of the separation of church and state.”
Samantha Bee
“What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.”
Phyllis Diller
“It may be a cliché, but it’s true – the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.”
Julie Burchill
You’d look the same if you had a Christmas tree stuck up your ass!
Top image: Charles van Sandwyk – ‘The Fairies’ Christmas’ – “How to See Fairies & Other Tales” – Folio Society 2018
Bottom image: Julian Clary
Filed under News
Have a Creepy Victorian Christmas
We have so many reasons to be thankful for the times in which we live: air conditioning, television, cell phones, cars, and no creepy Victorian-era Christmas cards. It may be difficult to imagine, but our ancestors of the 19th and early 20th centuries either had a distorted idea of what the yuletide season is supposed to represent or they had too much alcohol and not enough sex.
Whatever was wrong with them, we can undoubtedly determine their bizarre mindsets from a glance at some of their holiday cards. I mean…what reasonable person would glean Christmas joy from images of dead birds and dancing frogs? Then again, look who’s talking!
“I have come to greet you” (Inside it says: “Loving Christmas greetings, may smiling faces ring around your glowing hearth this Christmas day, may fun and merriment abound, and all your world be glad and gay”)
Filed under Classics
Party Gone!
Those of us who served time in the corporate working world are all too familiar with the often-loathsome office party – the annual end-of-the-year gathering where coworkers pretend they’ve loved spending so much of their time throughout the year with one another. One good thing about working freelance is that I’ve been able to avoid such mundane bacchanalias. But 2020 has allowed many in the workforce to evade the antics of business life.
At the end of 1999, executives at the bank in Dallas where I worked conjured up the bright idea of staging quarterly workplace assemblages to encourage team building. This was also when the idiotic concept of multi-tasking had become forcibly fashionable. In January of 2000, we were to gather at a restaurant / gaming house to have dinner and then engage in some kind of laser tag amusement. Since it took place after work, I informed my manager and constituents I could not make it; that it would cut into my free time, which would only serve to aggravate me and not make me love them any more than I already didn’t. I wasn’t the only one with the same sentiment. In April we took off in the middle of the day to patronize…a bowling alley. I absolutely HATE bowling. Like golf, I don’t consider anything near a sport. Any activity where people dress up in ugly slacks or short pants and consume alcohol at the same time isn’t a sport! But, as Gloria Gaynor once bellowed, I survived.
In July, we gathered after work for dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. Afterwards, we were to stroll to a local movie theatre and watch “The Perfect Storm”, which had just been released. I had already read the book of the same name written by Sebastian Junger. I would have liked to see the movie, but not right then, seated alongside my coworkers. Besides, dinner and a movie doesn’t sound like a team-building exercise; it sounds more like a date. Again I expressed myself and didn’t go to the movie, even though the bank was paying for it.
The following month all hell seemed to break loose, when the bank underwent a major management rearrangement and several mid-level managers (including mine) had their jobs eliminated. So much for team-building!
Photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager obviously comprehends the uncomfortable nature of the dreaded office party and has captured its mendacity in a new exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “Farewell, Work Holiday Parties” pays homage to the drudgery of the working world and the demands it often imposes upon its minions who often spend more time at work than at home. The exhibit features about a dozen sculptures that look eerily like real people when photographed. They’re bizarre moments of debauchery and stupidity perpetrated under the guise of workplace camaraderie. It’s a little bit of “The Poseidon Adventure” (a New Year’s party wrecked by a rogue wave) mixed with “Die Hard” (an office Christmas party ravaged by well-dressed terrorists).
Regardless, the images are certain to bring tears and/or smiles to many and a general sense of, “Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with that shit anymore!”
Filed under Art Working
Spread This!
Be careful what you say. And write. And post in an advertisement. In trying to keep Americans’ spirits energized for the upcoming holidays, the Giant Foods grocery chain created this jewel for its food platter offerings – without fact-checking the verbiage. In the midst of a lethal pandemic the last thing anyone desires is a “super-spreader” event. I mean, we already have one in the White House.
Giant Foods apologized for the ad and promptly pulled it. I have to admit all that cheese, shrimp and wine looks delectable! Just don’t breathe on it!
Filed under Curiosities
Better Not Cry! Better Just Shut the Hell Up!
Nothing says Christmas like evergreen trees, candy canes, strings of colorful lights, ginger bread-spiced Xanax and kids screaming in terror while perched on Santa’s lap. The latter is particularly reminiscent of those times when you feel the yuletide holiday brings out the best in people. As these photos indicate, that’s just not true. Yes, it’s that glorious time of the year. Merry Christmas, all you little fuckers!
Filed under Curiosities
Merry Christmas 2014!
“Don’t let the past steal your present. This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone.”
Filed under News
Chief Writing Wolf 