A real evergreen decked with handmade ornaments. Choruses of
“O Little Town of Bethlehem” around a roaring fire. A ham dinner with all the
trimmings for you and yours. Midnight mass. These are the things that make up
an old-fashioned Christmas. But there aren’t very Psychobabbley.
Here on Psychobabble, old-fashioned does reign supreme, but
it ain’t that kind of sweater-vest brand of old-fashioned. It’s the
stupendously, tremendously retro
brand. Don’t understand what I mean? Well, don’t fear, don’t panic, and don’t
throw yourself in front of the next oncoming reindeer-drawn sleigh. My holiday
gift to you is the following 24-hour schedule for having a very merry
Psychobabble-style X-Mas….with all the groovy trimmings.
December 25
Midnight: Wake
up. Ideally you spent the entirety of Christmas Eve sleeping and building up
reserves of energy, because the following is—as I’ve already stated—a 24-hour
schedule. No sleep ’til Boxing Day. And you’re really going to need that energy
because the first task on our holiday schedule is stocking up on the gifts. No
lazy shopping in front of your fancy home computer. We do it the old-fashioned
way: Midnight Sale at Toys R’ Us. Be prepared to gouge out the eyeballs
of a fellow loving parent for that last Cabbage Patch Kid on the shelf, because
in Psychobabble Land, that kind of thing still happens.
1:00 A.M.: Now
get all that booty home and wrap it as fast as possible because it is time to deck some fucking halls the Psychobabble
way. If you’ve already set up projected LED snowflakes or any other newfangled
decoration, tear that shit down and replace it with toxic melted plastic peanut
snowmen on the windows, garish blow-molded Santa and reindeer display on the
roof, and flaming hot C7 ½ multicolored bulbs around the eaves. Tarp up that brick fireplace and hang your stockings from a vintage cardboard fireplace by Toymaster. Finish it all
off with an aluminum tree sprinkled with satin-covered Styrofoam balls and
bathed in the artificial glow of a motorized color wheel.
2:00 A.M.: You’re
going to have a few hours to kill before the kids wake up. Fill them with the
traditional marathon viewing of A Christmas Story on TNT. I know, I know. Most years you
would watch this eighties holiday classic (and, unfortunately, NRA
advertisement for children) many more than a mere two times. But considering
everything you have to accomplish over the following 20 hours, you simply don’t
have time to watch A Christmas Story
more than twice. Ohhhh... fudge.
5:00 A.M.: Right
about now, the tots should be toddling out of bed and down the steps to take in
the marvelous X-Mas tableaux you’ve created. They stand before it in awe for 11
seconds. Then they immediately tear into
the gifts you lovingly placed beneath that aluminum tree like rabid
wolverines. Watch as little Johnny’s eyes light up as he unwraps his very first
1962-edition Barbie’s Dream House! Look at little Song dance around the room
cradling her Kenner AT-AT complete with light-up laser cannons! Spend an hour
on the floor with Aaliyah making skyscrapers out of Lincoln Logs! Help little Santiago set up his bundle
of Mego Super Heroes and Planet of the Apes apes in a variety of exciting
action poses! But you only have an hour, because now it’s time to…
6:00 A.M.: …turn
on the TV! Yes, folks it would not be a very Psychobabble X-Mas without a very
lot of vegetating in front of the television. What brings a family together
more than two hours of classic holiday
episodes? That’s right: Not a goddamn thing. Begin with “Night of the
Meek”, the 1960 episode of The Twilight
Zone in which Art Carney plays a drunken department store Santa who
undergoes a classic Rod Serling twist! Follow it up with “The Monkees’
Christmas Show” in which Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter teach Eddie Munster the
true meaning of X-Mas before singing the glorious “Riu Chiu”. Next is “Simpsons
Roasting on an Open Fire”, the inaugural episode of the funniest series of the
twentieth century (and the unfunniest one of the twenty-first century!)!
Finally, desensitize your kids to depictions of murder and psycho-Santas with
“And All Through the House…”, perhaps the finest episode of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt.
8:00 A.M.: Turn
off the TV. There will be plenty more time for that later. Now it’s time to
spend 45 minutes with the Fab Four at their most festive. Gather the family around
the phonograph to giggle along with The
Beatles and the daffy Christmas records they released to their British Fan Club
from 1963 through 1969. I know that Universal Music recently reissued these discs on vinyl for the
first time ever, but listening to them would not be very retro. You must listen
to the crappy quality, exceedingly rare, and horrifically expensive flexi-discs
produced in the 1960s. A Psychobabble Crimble requires a certain degree of
commitment.
8:45 A.M.: You
now have 15 minutes to fill until our next festivities. Maybe drink some eggnog
or something. But it must be expired
eggnog. Drinking nog manufactured in the 21st century is hardly
retro.
9:00 A.M.:
Finished puking yet? Excellent! Now turn that TV back on, because you have some
more couch-potatoing to do. It wouldn’t be X-Mas without those delightful
Rankin/Bass stop-motion creatures twirling around and singing festive tunes
such as “We Are a Couple of Misfits”, “Silver and Gold”, “The Snow Miser Song”,
and “The Heat Miser Song”. So your next two hours will be filled with Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Year
Without a Santa Claus. No time for Frosty
the Snowman because there’s so much else to do and watch today! It’s not
even animated with stop-motion anyway.
11:00 A.M.: Time
for more family fun away from the boob tube. You will now collect up all those
Mego figures the kids got from under the tree and stage your very own Action Figure Recreation of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker! Cast Zira as little
Clara! The Joker as the Mouse King! Kirk, Uhura, and Mr. Spock as Sugar Plum
Fairies! And finally The Incredible Hulk as the Nutcracker! For the most
Psychobabbley experience, try using Duke Ellington’s funky version of “The
Nutcracker Suite”.
12:00 P.M.: OK.
Enough culture. It’s time for more TV. So you shall spend the next hour with Mulder,
Scully, Ed Asner, and Lily Tomlin as you decompress to the classic X-Files episode “How
the Ghosts Stole Christmas”. Get choked up all over again as Agents Mulder
and Scully get trapped in a haunted house and hallucinate that they murder each
other in bloody detail! Feel free to answer Mulder’s “left cheek sneak” with
one of your own.
1:00 P.M.: While
we’re in Christmas-stealing mode, do the natural thing and watch Boris Karloff voice
Dr. Seuss’s most lovable villain in Chuck
Jones’s timeless adaptation of How the
Grinch Stole Christmas. You could get all book-wormie and actually read
the story to your family, but I’m guessing your brain has now atrophied to the
point that that would be nearly impossible.
2:00 P.M.: I
think you and your family have now spent enough time sucking each other’s
oxygen. Why not get outside for some festive winter fun? Build a snowman! That’s the kind of thing we did back in the days
when it was still cold and snowy on X-Mas. Don’t let the horrors of climate
change get you down if you aren’t lucky enough to live in the North Pole or one
of the two or three other places that still get snow on December 25th.
Just pop open the freezer, yank out a hunk of frost, and start building your
personalized Frosty! You can always augment it with a few blasts of Reddi-Wip.
Don’t forget the carrot nose and corncob pipe!
3:00 P.M.: Your
limbs are probably all achy from all of that movement. You’ve earned yourself
some more TV-centric relaxation. Why not pop your Gremlins tape into the
Betamax and have yourself a regular hoot as an army of reptilian demons wreak
havoc on a Norman Rockwell-esque town at Christmastime?
6:00 P.M.:
There’s a major holiday element we’ve ignored thus far. Well, we shall ignore
it no longer. Time for some good old-fashioned Christmas music! And since this
is a very Psychobabble X-Mas, we won’t get any more old-fashioned than the
1960s. So give The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album and A Christmas Gift for You from
Philles Records your annual spins. Don’t be ashamed to surf along with
“Little St. Nick” or break out into slobbering sobs as Darlene Love belts
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”.
7:00 P.M.: Don’t
stop the tunes there! Now it’s time to spike that nog with some Old Grandad and
get rowdy as you drunkenly scream along
with a snatch of punk X-Mas records:
The Damned’s “There Ain’t No Sanity Clause”, The Ramones’ “Merry Christmas,
Baby (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”, and The Kinks’ “Father Christmas”. Feel
free to smash a few ornaments while you’re at it.
7:30 P.M.: Now
that you’re fortified with a bevy of holiday tunes (and Old Grandad), get the
kids together and go knocking on the neighbor’s door to force them to listen to
your own versions of these seasonal chestnuts! Make sure your caroling adventure does not resort to
the usual numbers. Keep things sufficiently Psychobabbley by crooning such
merry music as The Who’s “Christmas”, Smokey and the Miracles “Christmas
Everyday”, The Waitress’ “Christmas Wrapping”, the Stones’ “Winter”, Chuck
Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run”, XTC’s “Snowman”, Throwing Muses’ “Santa Claus”,
Procol Harum’s “A Christmas Camel”, and Guided by Voices’ “Kicker of Elves”.
8:30 P.M.: Nice
singing! You’ve sure earned yourself some more TV time. Use it wisely with
viewings of A Charlie Brown Christmas (8:30-to 9:00) and the super spooky 1951 version of A Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim (9:00-10:30). Then use
it unwisely with a merrily tedious viewing of the Star Wars Holiday Special (10:30-11:30) starring a bunch of
grunting wookies— the eldest of whom watches space porno starring Diahann
Carroll—Bea Arthur, Harvey Korman, and Jefferson Starship!
11:30 P.M.: By
now you must be completely tuckered out, and possibly hallucinating. Give those
sugar plums dancing in front of your eyes something to dance on by gazing at
the traditional Yule Log on New
York’s WPIX (not Netflix, you ultra
modernists!). Allow yourself to dose off. To paraphrase Paul McCartney’s finest
song, it’s simply been a wonderful Christmas Time… and if you’ve followed Psychobabble’s
retro holiday schedule to a T, you’ve spent it well.
