If I go into a restaurant at ten o’clock at night, and they are not closed this time, I should be able to order a venison sandwich and get it. I have said it before, I’ll say it again.

Good people, is this America, or communist Italy? We live in the richest and freest nation on earth. Freest? That doesn’t look right. Free-loving? Wrong implications, but I see little alternative. You know what I mean—we love freedom. We have endless resources and, Lord knows, if I can afford a venison sandwich, there is no good reason why I should not get it.

Don’t tell me it’s Christmas Eve, missy. I didn’t order a calendar. I ordered a venison sandwich. Venison has to be the fifth or sixth most popular kind of meat in the world. How can a national chain like McDonald’s run out of it so fast? That’s pretty ridiculous.

As you can guess, this really did happen. I had something called a “Big Mac” instead, some kind of cow meat or something, with salad dressing slathered all over it. I prefer my meats not to be slathered. Basted, or painted, perhaps. Never slathered, and certainly not drenched. Unless it’s with barbecue sauce, but this wasn’t. So yes, a nasty cow meat sandwich with slathered-on salad dressing. I promptly threw up. That was my Christmas present.

Camembert and his girlfriend Elvis were quite embarrassed. I think they just like to challenge me now. I’m paying for Christmas dinner, I reminded them, I’m the one who should be embarrassed about throwing up. But I wasn’t. Because as I said, they didn’t give me what I originally wanted—my stomach doesn’t compromise. It wanted venison, and it knows the difference between deer meat and cow meat slathered with salad dressing. McDonald should be ashamed of himself. I tried to get him on the phone, but those disrespectful slacker employees just kept calling him a clown. In my day, we respected our wealthy corporate founders.

I’m not sure, good people, what it is about Christmas that puts me in the mood for a tasty venison sandwich. It has long been my cross to bear. That and the large cross in my backyard, but I’m not finished building that quite yet.

Jesus had a cross to bear, too. It was called being the son of a popular Fellow. It’s not easy being God’s son. Everybody expects a lot from you, and they will not stop mentioning all the great things your Dad has done. And what have you done? That’s all they want to know. And that’s why Jesus made the venison sandwich—his gift to mankind.

Well, to make a bad column short, I got my venison sandwich finally, no thank you, McDonald’s. It was Camembert and Elvis’s gift to me. I was touched, right to the very heart. Girl Elvis apparently went and slaughtered a deer in the middle of the night just to make it for me. That’s what Christmas means to me—deer meat, wrapped in a bow.

Their gift? I got them a subscription to Friday Magazine, the magazine for people who really like Fridays. It was the only thing I could get on Christmas morning at 7 a.m., they have a 24-hour subscription hotline. But I believe they both like Fridays.

What? Should I knock myself out for a gift on Christmas morning? I don’t even have the sandwich anymore. I thought it was quite generous of me, considering.