My 12 DON'Ts of Christmas

Home again after the annual Christmas gift opening marathon with my wife’s family, I feel the need to get some things off my chest. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but it seems to me when you tell people who live an hour away that the party starts at 4 p.m. that it should, in fact, start about then.

Now I realize people have complicated lives and their world doesn’t revolve around mine, but is it really too much to expect people to stick to the plan? And when it’s the same person who keeps everyone else waiting year after year, it gets downright irritating -- at least to an outsider.

Maybe I’m just grumpy after waking – more accurately, being awakened – 11 hours prior to the scheduled festivities. And perhaps I should be more understanding of the sister-in-law whose brood includes three bastard children separated in age by nearly 20 years. After all, each of those children has a father with a family too. Add to the mix the flavor-of-the-year fiancée and I should really lighten up. It’s Christmas after all, and family comes first.

At least it should; and that’s my whole point. My in-laws – her flesh and blood – are the only common denominator in the 20 years I’ve known Deb, yet they’re always all-too willing to accommodate her habitual tardiness as she dashes through the woods for Christmas with Thing I, Thing II and Thing III. When do they get to come first?

But this is just the tip of the iceberg that is my observations of Christmas 2007. I give you my 12 DON’Ts of Christmas:

1—See above.

2—DON’T make early arrivers unload and park down by the football field only to allow the tardy to park in the driveway. It’s just bad form.

3—DON’T invite people into your home in the winter and expect them to take off their shoes. (This doesn’t apply to my in-laws, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway.)

4—DON’T insist on a Christmas tree that’s larger than your space can accommodate. The only thing that’s grown more than the guest list at the wife’s family Christmas is the TV. Consequently, the tree was relegated to the entryway, behind the French doors, not even in the same room!

5—Speaking of big screen TVs, for which I have great fondness, I don’t mind if you don’t want it on during gift opening. In fact, if the NBA is all you’ve got to offer, I’d just as soon not watch. But DON’T, please baby Jesus don’t, play one of those Yule log DVDs. It generates neither warmth nor fuzzies.

6—One more about big screen TVs (and another that doesn’t apply to my in-laws), DON’T subject everyone in attendance to a slide show of photos from a wedding half the room recently attended. If you must, at least reorient vertical pictures so they don’t appear horizontally on screen and add some music or something other than an unrehearsed commentary by Mom and Grandma. “She sure seems to be having a good time in the bathroom” is just something you shouldn’t hear at a family Christmas gathering.

7—If someone gets me something that you also got me and you find out about in time to make a change; DON’T expect me to exchange it. That’s on you.

8—If you can’t do better than a gift card, especially to a place I wouldn’t even spend my own money (McDonald’s comes to mind), DON’T bother.

9—DON’T give lottery tickets, ever.

10—DON’T leave goodies within the reach of small children and expect others to monitor their consumption.

11—All son-in-laws, fiancées and boyfriends are not created equal. DON’T treat them that way. Seniority ought to count for something.

12—DON’T fake it. This applies to trees, religion and, most of all, food. For example, don’t ask me to bring a relish tray just so I don’t come empty-handed while you whip up a batch of “homemade” soup from Sam’s Club. I can do better, and so can you.