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Ahhhh the Holiday season is upon us... And that can mean only one thing:

Christmas.

That's right you PC whiner babies, I said Christmas. If you're living in the United States, I don't care what tradition you follow, what religion you are, or how you spend your time during the season.

It is FRIGGING Christmas time, and you need to deal with it.

It isn't some psycho puritan shoving his beliefs down your throat, and people telling you "Merry Christmas" aren't trying to offend you because you don't believe that some guy was nailed to a couple of 2x4's and left propped up like the world's bleediest Scarecrow.

Christmas is no longer "Christmas". It has become a generic holiday that EVERYONE can enjoy, as long as we focus on love, peace, and presents, and not some dude screaming as he gets tacked up like a memo on a corkboard.

Christmas is a living, breathing thing that changes over the generations. Hell, YOU don't even follow or for that matter, KNOW ABOUT the traditions that were around 100 years ago. Traditions that were followed, sacred, and a REAL part of the holiday are completely forgotten or changed with the times.

Just like Christmas.

Take the Yule Log for example. Once a time honored and carefully followed tradition, now a delightful winter cake...

The Yule Log was once an object of utmost seriousness in every household, much like cake. The Yule Log predicted the future, foretold of death, and if improperly prepared could mean a curse on you, your loved ones, and your family.

Again, much like cake.

The Yule Log was selected from a tree stump or a piece of wood stolen from a neighbor's yard. You couldn't buy it, because that was against the rules and would immediately result in your family dying of rickets. So you either had to find one, be given one as a gift, or steal a piece of wood from your neighbor's pile - which was like the olden days version of siphoning gas out of his car.

Once you snuck back inside with your stolen hunk of dead wood, you would prepare it carefully and with painstaking detail, so that it would burn the entire night.

Which was REALLY frigging important.

If your Yule Log burned too quickly, was consumed too fast, or its embers died out too rapidly, it was a curse on your family. (And more than likely you were eaten by wolves that were attracted by the smell of little Billy's rickets.)

Yeah, earlier times REALLY sucked.

Everything and anything was a bad omen and the Yule Log was no exception, so it was handled with the utmost care. When you spend most of your day trying not to get the plague or die of tick infestations, you don't take any frigging chances when it comes to gaining even more bad luck. So you took your TIME with that dirty hunk of tree that you plunked down on your table.

Once the Yule Log was prepared, it had to be lighted on the very first try. Failure to do so meant that something horrible was going to happen to your family, and if it didn't spark right up, the game was over before it even started.

Which had to REALLY suck.

Think about it. One minute you're full of hope and joy, looking forward to the next day and gift giving in your hand-made wood and mud house. The next your family is all depressed, your kids are kids are crying, and your wife is taking them down to the river to drown them in mercy one by one...

...because you couldn't light a stick on fire on the first strike.

And you thought the holidays with your in-laws were bad? Try ruining everything because you breathed to hard on a sliver of wood from last year's Yule Log that you saved under your bed in order to light this year's piece. That's right, you had to save a hunk of the previous year's log in order to light THIS year's. And you had to keep it under your bed.

Do you even KNOW how many Yule Logs were lit with pieces of petrified mouse or really hard dust bunnies?

"Honey..are you sure that's the sliver of wood?"

"GOD DAMN IT BEATRICE! YES! For the LAST time woman, it is the HUNK OF YULE LOG! DO YOU EVEN REALIZE HOW MUCH F***ING PRESSURE THIS IS?!? WHY ARE YOU BOTHERING ME?!?"

"Because it has whiskers and it is struggling in your hand."

"...."

And then Beatrice had the honor of serving the family their Figgie pudding while nursing a shiner while everyone ignored it and pretended that they didn't notice.

THAT is holiday pressure right there.

And IF you got that puppy lit? You're STILL not out of danger. Now you spend the entire night telling ghost stories and tales of horror about hook handed hitchhikers by the dying embers of your Yule Log.

And why do you do this? So that you can examine all of the shadows on the wall in order to see if anyone in the room was going to die that year.

...

....no wonder we turned this god damn thing into a festive nut-cake. F*** you Yule Log. Seriously. F*** you.

We just wanted to leave a bowl of milk out for Santa's elves as we huddled down in our small pox filled blankets and tried not to catch any diseases that required leeches as their only cure.

"You mean milk and cookies Coyote!"

No. I mean a bowl of milk.

You see, Santa's Elves weren't the cute little midgets in green shirts and bells that you see at the mall every year. They weren't jolly little kids who never aged and spent all their times spreading joy and farting glitter.

Santa's Elves were just that. ELVES. And Elves, believe it or not, were feared.

And for good reason.

They might bring you gifts, help with chores, or bless you with cheer on Christmas - or they might, and I am NOT making this up...

Go into a goblin rage because you slighted them and brutally and bloodily murder you and your entire family as you sleep, leaving the messy crime scene and your still twitching innards strung up as a warning to other families who don't make with the bowl of milk.

Christmas lives and breathes, and occasionally murders sleeping children - and I'm okay with that. I have two, so the odds that one of them will be Elf Massacre Free this year are pretty good.

My point is, even if you don't celebrate the Christian values and ideas behind this poorly bastardized Pagan Holiday that they took and altered in effort to convert more followers - you CAN celebrate the spirit of the day.

The joy, the giving, the TIME OFF OF WORK, and most importantly of all...

...the presents.

So Merry Christmas to all of you. (Which is HILARIOUS coming from me for a number of reasons.)

I hope you get everything you wanted, rest on the time off, and above all else...

...you left out that bowl of milk.

Because....damn.

-Coyote