Christmas is, Christmas is (on a keyboard that sticks)

Two years ago was the worst Christmas ever in the Mikel household. I will spare you the details. It was horrible. Since then, my family has collectively and undiscussedly decided it will never happen again. We go to extremes, like the whole 11-foot real christmas tree shebang, dropping tons of money on presents, cooking/baking marathons that result in an amount of food that could not possibly be eaten by 4 people, no matter how hungry we were. The coffee table heaped with books, DVDs, shirtboxes, etc, etc, empty tin that used to have homemade fudge but the dog ate it. The fire place lousy with ashes from the roaring fires that have been burning for days. The fridge packed with leftovers. The tree heavy with hundreds, hundreds of bulbs.

The holiday reeks of lavishness unnatural to the Mikel family.

That one Christmas was so awful, that it really makes one appreciate a good Christmas even more. So my dad gave me a kleenex box in the shape of a totem pole. Is that really all I have to complain about? Yup.