Singles: Do you decorate for Christmas?

And he wins the contest and Christmas is complete. Unless, of course, you're Al's mom or Jill.

Al's old beeper as a Christmas gift, really?

 

Christmas is never complete unless one of their kids is having some sort of personal crisis.

 

You mean, hypothetically, like Mark doesn't know if Santa really exists or if Randy feels slighted by his family? I'm just throwing those out there.

 

I strung some lights on my upstairs deck, mostly because it looks cool.
The stocking my mom made for me when I was still gestating, is in the living room.
That's it.
I don't see the point. I don't entertain and I go elsewhere for the holiday itself.

 

There is a joke here to be made, about Jay and Christmas and a virgin...but I just can't bring myself to do it.

 

Or if Randy is in Costa Rica and no one in the family feels like celebrating without him...and then he comes walking in the front door?

And don't forget about Brad not wanting to be with his family because they told him he couldn't go skiing on Christmas Eve. It has the classic line from Tim: "Christmas isn't supposed to be about being with people you like! It's about being with your family!"

 

Oh, ice cream boobies and I are back to being just friends these days. I miss those creamy scoops, but she was driving me insane, and not in a good way, when we were clothed, so I had to say adios, scoops.

Well, I don't expect my reasons for decorating to be of much interest, but here goes.

For one thing, Christmas has religious significance for me, so that's why it registers on the give-a-fuck-o-meter. Though I did continue to decorate, but only just a little, during my agnostic 20s, so there is more to it...

Well, I really like Christmas lights, but I don't want to have Christmas lights up in my apartment year-round. So it's a great excuse to put up lights. I like the tree- it smells good and I put Mexican tin ornaments on it, which I like. It's fun to have a tree and lights when hosting- which isn't that frequent, but I do have people over sometimes, and it just makes for a nice ambiance.

Something about Christmas is just appealingly old-fashioned and retro. I like all the Victorian bullshit about chestnuts and sleigh rides and the family stories of Christmas on the farm back in the old days that I heard when I was a kid.

But to get back to the single person thing. Christmas, with all its emphasis on family activities, emphasizes to me that I'm still single and childless. Christmas always makes me think of what it would be like to have a wife and a kid. It stirs up a very primal, caveman sort of urge to gather a family around a hearth under my protection. The old paterfamilias instinct. It's the man equivalent of a woman's desire to nest. Somehow, putting up Christmas decorations seems to serve that sensibility for me. It helps the old bachelor pad seem like a legitimate home, where there's tradition, warmth and stability. Instead of the scandalous den of transient vice that it sometimes is.

 

Tim Taylor: Solid parenting, but with more power.

 

I didn't when I lived in the dorms in college. I didn't when I had a roommate at one stop - and we were roommates for more than three years and got along just fine. He always got a vacation window around Christmas and made it home. Me? Sometimes.

Not going to start now. Shoot, it was all I could do to get my stuff wrapped and under the tree in the last few hours. One box was freaking ridiculous. And yes ... some of the presents were gift-bagged. I know ... I suck.

 

So why ever be clothed around each other?

 

Well of course I suggested that solution, but she seemed oddly insulted.

 

I had faith that you had considered it.