Battle of the Ages: Who gain the crown of "Best Holiday?"
It truly is a fortunate situation that the last few months every year have set up for us everday normal folk. While the overall quality of the weather gets exponentially shittier and every female puts away every partially revealing piece of clothing to be replaced with Ugs and 15 layers of jackets and scarves, we are rewarded with two of the greatest holidays in the known universe: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both of these events are first world celebrations of absolutely shameless overindulgence in everything that is good and joy-inducing in this life: material possessions, comfort food, and outright laziness on some arbitrary notion that we have accomplished deeds significant enough to warrant these treasures. However, each of these holidays has a number of dimensions that need to be considered, and after all is said and done, we will find out one of these holidays is actually superior to the other. Since I am in the business of solving these difficult issues, let’s hope right to it and see who wins this matchup based on our “Holiday Scorecard,” (But unlike the cards used in Manny Pacquaio’s most recent fight, this isn’t to facilitate the world’s biggest gambling event of all time, it’s just to prove a point.”
Overall Atmosphere:
Thanksgiving- Sadly, not much going with regards to a “feel” for this holiday. You obviously have maybe a few days off from work, and Thanksgiving serves as a wonderful trump card of getting out of your professional obligations. As a kid, it was fun to trace your hand and make a paper turkey or a pilgrim hat during art class (or in my case, ignore what I was supposed to be doing so I could dump Elmers glue all over my hands and peel it off once it dried. No one who did this can deny it was fun as hell, both for the activity itself and the anger induced brain aneurysm it gave the teacher.) But beyond cooking/raiding the supermarket for every piece of trans fat laden comfort food you can find, there’s a dearth of Thanksgiving atmosphere.
Christmas- Hands down winner on this front. You got the absolute works going here: sparkly decorations bedecking every building, the fresh smell of pine emanating from every corner of society, and the absolute auditory orgasm that is Christmas Music. Seriously, a straight month of absolute classic holiday tunes and catchy jingle bell laden music that makes even despondent murderous sociopaths feel warm and fuzzy inside (or maybe slightly less murderous. I wouldn’t know, I’m just a sarcastic asshole, not a fully blown sociopath.) Not to mention all the fantastic movies that took your imagination on a magical ride when you were a child. Even watching them now, like the perfect Christmas movie Elf, gives feel good, nostalgic vibes up the wazoo. Watching the snowflakes flutter gently outside while you sip hot cocoa listening to “Let it snow?” That’s as good as it fucking gets, you could make a postcard out of that scene, its truly that awesome.
Score- Christmas: 1 Thanksgiving: 0
Preparatory Work:
Thanksgiving- Since the ultimate theme of Thanksgiving is “Laziness/Gorge your face off until you want to Puke,” the preparatory work here is minimal to moderate at best. You get the opportunity to buy the tastiest treats that you don’t indulge in regularly if you have no inclination to do cooking of any sort. But if you are the ambitious type, you get to put on your best cooking face and bust out that perfect recipe you got from Grandma for mouth watering stuffing, sumptuous mashed potatoes, or that absolutely perfectly marinated, hormonally enhanced Turkey. After all that is out of the way, the rest you have to do is go into your closet and intentionally wear an outfit that is a couple sizes too big because after the 8 helpings of everything you inhale through your gullet, you will most certainly need the extra room.
Point goes to Thanksgiving on this one for having an amount of work that matches the theme of the holiday itself.
Christmas- As much fun as Christmas can be, the amount of work that needs to be put into this event is an absolute bitch. You have a billion presents to buy for people, some because you want to and others because of dumb fucking social/family obligations that make no sense to you (Just because my second cousin gets me something I hate every year DOES NOT mean I want to give him a DAMN THING), which often takes place in an angry mob pillaging (edit: shopping) every single mall in existence and drains your bank account in the process. Setting up lights outside has to be one of the most miserable experiences on the planet. Every single year without fail, even if they are brand fucking new, something will go wrong with them. Certain lights won’t work, it will set itself to “Twinkle” mode when you just want “Regular” with no way of switching them, or they will be tangled into a horrific knot ridden pile of misery and anger that takes every ounce of patience and finger dexterity to sort out. Throw in the additional suckitude of shoveling, finding a Christmas tree that isn’t fucked in some way (either structurally or because the owner of the tree farm realizes, once a year, he can price gouge the ever loving fuck out of everyone) and this dimension is a big time negative for Christmas.
Score: Christmas: 1 Thanksgiving: 1
The Day’s Events/ Post Game Wrap Up
Thanksgiving/Christmas- This is where it gets difficult, since there is a significant amount of overlap in what revelry is engaged in on both occasions, as well as this being the tiebreaker, so we’ll break both holidays down in this section. Both have sumptuous spreads of food with all manner of goodies ready for reckless consumption, though Christmas can often include a spiral ham with a heavy dosage of candy for good measure. Additionally, you get all kinds of material possessions (American dream, right? Having way more shit than you actually need) on Christmas morning which is just plain fantastic. However, after eating your face off on Thanksgiving, you have the god given right to watch football until you pass out into a food induced coma. No pretending you like the shitty gifts that your in-laws gave you, zero obligation to engage in any type of pointless banter. Just watch the most American sport to exist until you want to go to sleep. Then, Thanksgiving always gives you gifts that you will like: leftovers. All the delectable treats you wanted to eat, but couldn’t fit because your stomach was at the point of rupturing, YOU CAN SAVE FOR LATER. Your only duty following Thanksgiving is to ensure that you eat even more. Christmas requires an extensive amount of un-decorating everything after the fact and you have to find a diplomatic way of asking for the receipts for the awful gifts you didn’t want, instead of outright telling the person what they got you sucked. Return lines at retail outlets post Christmas are almost as bad as buying the shit in the first place because you know for a fact everyone is in that miserably long line for the sole reason of exchanging their unwanted crap for something useful to them. This one comes down to the wire, but I’m declaring by a slim margin Thanksgiving is the winner by technical knockout, despite a valiant effort by Christmas.
FINAL SCORE: Thanksgiving: 2 Christmas: 1
P.S. Since I was way too complimentary for most of this piece, I need something excessively negative to go out on, so here it is. Valentine’s Day is the worst fucking holiday of all time. It’s not even a holiday, it’s a made up bullshit excuse for people to increase the bottom line of Hallmark/florist/chocolate companies, while every couple everywhere instantly goes into panic mode because everyone’s notion of what is appropriate on that day is different. Fuck Valentines Day.
