Getty Images - elf by LightFieldStudios; snow by AlexeyVS
Art Kumbalek elf on sled
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, I hear it’s already the month called December that includes the Christmas day, which many consider to be a hooting-tooting holiday. Yes, December, the so-called 12th and last month, finally, of this and any ferkakta year according to experts who track this kind of stuff, what the fock.
December: the month of the winter solstice, the day with the fewest daylight hours, certainly a boon to vampires all over the Northern Hemisphere; so I suggest to you holiday gift-buyers out-and-about that you keep a keen eye out for fellow shoppers who may appear to be bat-crazy (numerous, they are).
I recommend you wear a winter cap composed of threads of garlic not to mention that you best carry a sharpened silver letter-opener so as to stab through the heart your nearest living-dead competitor as you attempt to be the first to grab the Bitzee Intertactive Toy Digital Pet and Case off the Walmart shelf, I kid you not.
Anyways, regardless of whatever holiday bug you may have up your butt, I know for many of you’s it just wouldn’t be the Christmas without the once-in-awhile annual retelling of a Christmas classic you first read here—a traditional holiday experience not unlike the pinching of the Yule log Christmas morning and the hot focking toddy slam-binging to come later in the day, ain’a? And what is tradition but the same goddamn thing over and over? You tell me.
And then I’ll tell you that TV has its “Charlie Brown Christmas,” the performing stage has its Nut-focking-cracker and A Christmas Carol, the city has its property tax bills, the Milwaukee Brewers have questions at first and third base, and “Art for Art’s Sake” has one version or another of what follows for you and the family, guaranteed to roast the cockles of your god-blessed chestnuts.
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OK, story has it that these three so-called kings loaded up with a bunch of gifts are from out of this place called Orient Are, wherever the fock that was supposed to be. To this day I still can’t find it on a map. But you got to remember, this was way-way-back in the old-olden days when your average wise man thought the Earth to be flatter than a ballerina, so what the fock.
So, these three guys were traipsing to and fro, checking out all the towns and what-not of the then-known world in search of an infant recently conceived out of thin air, a child who was not only rumored but also proclaimed verily to those on high to be the son of god.
One of the kings queried, “Which god?” One of the other king guys says, “What, like I should know from ‘which god’? A god is a god is a god. Who cares which one, for cripes sakes.” And the third wiseguy said, “Yeah, forget about it. I don’t care if he’s the focking son of the god of focking rodeo clowns for focking crying out loud, we still got to go pay our respects on general principles. It’s the right thing to do, capiche?”
So they’re carting these gifts all over creation, gifts that even a kid back then would think sucked ass. I mean “frankincense,” an aromatic gum resin? Give me a focking break. Eventually, these three guys came across a lowly stable and decided genug ist genug. They asked a guy who was hanging around there if he’d like some gifts ’cause they were sick and tired of carrying them from hell-and-back. The stable guy says “you betcha” and invites them in for a nice hot focking toddy.
The wise men waltz into the stable but the guy with the myrrh, who was a bit taller than the other two Einsteins, cracked his head on the top of the doorway. “Jesus H. Christ!” he shouts. The stable guy, whose name happened to be Joseph wouldn’t you now, calls out to the wife, Mary, “Hey hon! You hear that? ‘Jesus H. Christ.’ I like that a lot better than ‘Chester,’ ain’a?” Ba-ding!
So, there you go. And as a devotion upon to emergent occasions, tradition suggests I wish you happy holidays, merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, joyous whatever-it-is-you-got-deserves-celebrating. And to all: I hope you get what’s coming to you, right here, right now, and I mean that in the best way. Be damn sure to celebrate these holidays good and plenty. You just can’t ever be 100 per-focking-cent sure that it may not be the last one you’ll get; so make it a good one, what the fock, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
