So, it’s T-minus-two-weeks before Christmas, and not only have we not shopped, decorated, or completed the Christmas letter, I’m not even tempted to arrange the reasons why in a  cute Twas the Night Before Christmas format.

And for that you’re welcome.

Of course, because I’m a giver, I’m going to put off all the holiday rigamarole for another little while, pour another cup of coffee, and contemplate the

3.5 ways I will have destroyed Christmas before it even gets here

1. I’ll probably have a melt-down while decorating. Jack suggested we skip the tree this year. Our fourteen year-old would rather SKIP CHRISTMAS than see me blow a gasket putting up our fake tree that wore out years ago. Every year, we drag the thing up from the basement, stack the sections together, place them in the holder and painstakingly pull out branches and fluff them up to look artfully not-fake.

In the process, I’ll be stabbed by a thousand fake-pine-needle-pins, something I’m sure has been outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

I’ll have to figure out which things plug into which things, forgetting that an entire section of the handily pre-attached lights has Never. Freaking. Worked. Eventually, I’ll twist the tree around so the dark side side is neither visible from the street nor from inside.

Then I’ll collect the ornaments from the upstairs closet that always reminds me of that scene from The Grudge where the ghostly, stringy-haired, Japanese woman with no jaw rushes from the shadows to eat your face. I’ll make twenty trips to and from the closet and the boys will hang ornaments for five minutes until they start fighting about which side of the tree belongs to whom. I’ll kick everybody out and they’ll go play video games, which is what they wanted to do in the first place.

Our friends Steph and Bob put up three Christmas trees this year. She’s OCD about Christmas and he’s an enabler. Mike suggested we put up four trees, because we’re competitive about stupid stuff. I thought about it for a minute longer than I thought about punching him right in the junk for coming up with the idea. It was a toss up.

2. I will whine about Christmas traditions. I’m pooped of pictures with Santa. I’ve skipped four parties already this year. My waistline takes too long to recover. I’m pretty much ready to scrap every Christmas tradition there is.

Except family time. I appreciate that there’s an excuse for everyone to get together. I love my family and the fact that 92 percent of them don’t throw in much for the holiday tradition thing either (except for sister-in-law Suzy’s festive plate-o-cookies. That tradition’s a keeper).

And “Tom and Jerrys.” Sugary froth and nutmeg and hot water is the only way I’ll drink bourbon, even though I shouldn’t drink bourbon because it gives me an outrageous headache.

Oh, and on Christmas morning: egg casserole with sausage, and coffee, which are the only things that taste good on when I’m nursing a headache and trying not to yell when people are strewing scraps of paper and unassembled pieces of toys around which we would have assembled the night before except we’d had too many Tom and Jerrys.

3. I’ll get hung up on the idea that Christmas presents should be modest and not make us feel like materialistic bastards. At least until Christmas morning, when I’ll realize I look like the Grinch. It’s a fact: We have too much crap. What I really want is space and time and the ability to eat food without my waistline testing the stretchability of my stretchable jeans. I want to drink Tom and Jerrys without getting a headache. I want everybody to be happy and well and I want it to happen without it requiring a single trip to the mall.

and the bonus …

3.5 I’ll finally be motivated to get in the spirit, but for the wrong reason.

Okay, this isn’t destroying Christmas, so it only warrants half a point. I decided Mike’s idea was BRILLIANT, which is how we ended up spending the second to last Saturday before Christmas at WalMart buying three new fake trees rather than doing any of our Christmas shopping.

Bam. I’ll see your three live trees and raise you another. Well, only one of them is live since Mike agreed to retire our regular fake and get our first live tree in seven years – a Douglas Fir, which smells heavenly and isn’t a bit stabby. The others were cheap, 3-footers we set up for the picture, then donated.

Because decorating for Christmas is arduous, but decorating to punk a friend is rather motivating.

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