Yuletide Don'ts from The Ghost of Christmas Past

 Warnings from the Ghost of Christmas Past 

 

By G. C. Past  

 

I am the Ghost of Christmas Past and I manifest each year at this time to give warning to those who commit unpardonable seasonal transgressions that a more forgiving deity might, and I say might, overlook.  

 

Hear me and reform, lest I haunt you to your air-parched, terminal breath.  

 

Place not on thy innocent lawn those hideous inflatable yuletide decorations. When the blessed sun doth crack the dawn, they deflate and resemble crime scene pools of blood and smashed egg yolks. In short, they infect the eyes! Away with them! 

 

Gift not the decorative wine stopper for it shall be abandoned with lightening haste in early January at your local thrift shop. Many pine away on haunted shelves at this very moment subject to their latest, and not last, re-gifting. Know well that those who drink deep of the fermented grape drain each soldier to the last and need not save even a dribble of the dregs for future imbibing.  

 

 

                                                                             GIFT ME NOT

For those who see fit to blast holiday songs over their garishly illuminated properties, play not those ditties composed by contractual obligation that betray not a wilted molecule of genuine yuletide spirit. These include, but are not limited to, the strained, back-of-an-envelope, compositions of a Springteenian and McCartneyesque variety. 

 

Know well that ugly holiday sweater contests are the clever creation of a consortium of South China-based manufacturers with severe quality control issues. 

 

Turn thy head away from any made-for-television, second tier cable network, holiday-themed movies. They are merely platforms to provide work for third string actors and talent-free directors, and all are re-writes of a 1971 television special featuring Marlo Thomas, Moosie Drier, and Lawrence Luckinbill. 

 

Should a strand of old twinkling lights fail to glow, do not store them away until next year in the mystic hope that they will somehow “heal”. Twinkle light resurrection was excised from the Apocrypha in 934 A.D.   

 

Even in our rancidly anti-reverential age, there are still some items that should not be employed to ornament a Christmas tree. These include hypodermic needles, bongs, eyeless baby doll heads, and anything with the word Kardashian printed on it.  

 

Know forever that there is no such thing as Xmas.    

 

Fitting a Santa cap on the Halloween skeleton that you failed to remove from your porch is neither creative nor clever. It’s lazy.   

 

If you are prompted to “call in the next ten minutes” to obtain a particularly neat little extra to be added to a holiday gift idea being hawked at 3 a.m. on channel 1332, don’t.  

 

And so. You have been duly warned! I will be back next year! 

 

James Terminiello, author of the acclaimed satire Junkyard, haunts his victims from Mount Laurel, New Jersey 

 

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