Why Not Have Two Christmases?
the commune's Rok Finger is trimmed in tinsel and popcorn strings for the holidays 

Monday, Dec. 24, 2001
Ladies and genitalmen, I am filled up to my ears with Christmas cheer! And, to a lesser extent, liquid opium. Each year around this time I am amazed and bewildered when the same ol' jingle bellsy, silent nightish, away-in-a-mangeresque feeling creeps back in like Rudolph guiding Santa's sleigh flying low under radar. In some ways, when it comes to Christmas, I'm just a big kid, and I mean in a good way, not like the rudenik teenagers making fun of me as I shop for suits in the children's wear section of Sears refer to me as a big kid.

Which prompts the question, why is Christmas celebrated only once a year?

Around this time, as people's thoughts turn to the needs of their fellow man, and his live-in girlfriend, as children stand wide-eyed and open-mouthed with their sloppy noses pushed up against toy store windows with wonder until the fire hoses are turned on them, as children hang their stockings or those of dad's mistress by the fireplace with hopes of sugar hill gangs and such in their head, some people become a little misty-eyed and get a lump in their throat wondering, why can't Christmas be every day of the year?

Well, that's moronic, it would lose all meaning to have it happen every day of the year. Such a preposterous notion clearly is the work of someone who has little or no foresight or clue as to how the world actually works and makes me want to grab said person or persons and shake them until one of us has a stroke. No, that's ridiculous, we need a way to preserve how special Christmas is and yet still not have to wait a whole other year for it to occur. So I've come up with the perfect solution: Two Christmases!

Obviously the key ingredient is spacing it out properly. Having Christmas in November would steal all the joy out of the original Christmas in December, and we'd be eating enough turkey to slip into a seasonal winter coma from all the L-triptophane. Likewise, if we put it in January it would begin to grow on your nerves. Sure, I like the idea of getting a second chance to buy a better gift for some loved one based on how poorly they reacted to the first, but the logical answer here is to space the second Christmas out far enough to really appreciate it.

The clear answer for me is July. When in July? I was getting to that, you needn't be so pushy.

I say July 4th, good people. What about the Fourth of July, you ask? What about it?

Let's celebrate Christmas in the middle of summer, feelin' hot! Hot! Hot! A shorts-and-tank-top Christmas, a Jimmy Buffett-by-the-fireplace Christmas, a tequila-and-ribs-for-Santa Christmas. Let's start new traditions, I say. Let fireworks light the way for Santa! The kids can hang their wet swimsuits on the porch for Santa to fill up with presents; whimsical and practical.

New Christmas specials for a new holiday. It's A Christmas Sunburn, Charlie Brown!, Perry Como Live From Rio de Janiero. Bing Crosby's Dreaming of A Sweltering, Fuzzy Christmas. Sure, most of those people are dead already, I don't keep up on new celebrity but surely someone could fill their fossilized shoes.

Christmas is way too special to be just once a year. And people say Christmas is about the birth of Jesus and the celebration of his life, but I say Christmas is more than that: It's big, glossy, commercialized and holds little to no religious meaning. Why limit that to only once a year?