Dr. Santa Presents

How to Have a Perfectly Dreadful

Christmas

Santa’s List

In order to have THE Perfectly Dreadful Christmas you will have to pay attention to 3 time periods:

The days leading up to Christmas

Christmas day The week after

Christmas

The DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS

The following activities will guarantee that you generate as much stress as possible, not only for you but for your entire family!

Outdoor Decorating

Light up your entire house, roof, deck, and trees with coloured lights, manger, assorted animals, and Santa.

Argue with partner about what colours to have; blow the fuses 6 times

Put them up on the coldest day in December..

Gift Buying

Focus on buying gifts that will take you 12 months to pay for.

Leave the actual buying until a week before Christmas

Give them what they gave you last year. Pretend it’s a new tradition.

Christmas Baking

Bake dozens of different kinds of cookies in all different shapes; order turkey, ham, goose, and duck to cook for Christmas dinner, and a Christmas pudding for dessert along with mince meat tarts, and apple pie

Run out of shortbread cookies and force fruitcake on people

Fry up a tofu burger for the vegetarians in the crowd

Holiday Traditions

Plan to incorporate the holiday traditions of both sides of the family, plus those of the 15 other guests you’ve invited; sing carols at the neighbours.

Plan to watch Miracle on 45 St. together as a family after dinner; realize the new neighbours are Jewish

Listen to “Grandma got run over by a Reindeer”, and “Alvin and the Chipmunks” every day during Advent.

Christmas Day Tips

If you want to ensure that the actual day itself is perfectly dreadful, then you could consider the following:

Christmas Morning

Have the kids dive in, find and open their gifts all at once.

Spend the next 2 hours trying to match gifts with gift cards.

Break up fights between kids; try to locate missing pieces of the 1000 piece jig saw puzzle

Christmas Dinner

Between football games on t.v. and electronic games, try to get everyone to sit down together, at one table, for a lovely Christmas dinner.

Insist that everyone try a little of everything, including squash, because how will they know whether or not they like it if they don’t try it?

Fry up a tofu burger for the vegetarians, and clean up dog barf from pet getting into turkey bones.

Relationships

Invite estranged members of the family in hopes that the season will effect a reconciliation

Keep sharp instruments out of the hands of those who are arguing over whose fault it was that Izzy had to get married

Hide the liquor

Christmas Day Activities

Plan for everyone in the family to enjoy a common activity together.

Referee arguments over who gets how much time on the computer

Explain to the kids that Uncle George had a late night working and needs to rest

Cleaning Up

Wash your good china by hand so it doesn’t get broken; vacuum the living room while asking people politely to lift their feet.

Have everyone press and neatly fold the wrapping paper for reuse

Go through all the garbage bags looking for missing pieces of gifts.

Christmas Week Tips

Christmas stress does not have to end just because the day is finished.

With careful planning, you can ensure that the perfectly dreadful day will last for an entire week, up to and including New Year’s.

Here are the 5 major stressors

Boxing Day

Plan to hit the malls early so that you can snap up wrapping paper and gifts for next year.

You and 3000 other people flood electronic stores for 2 i-pads that are marked down to $450 from $499

You blow your entire next year gift budget on things that you will put away and forget about

Change in Routine

Make plans to sleep in, have leisurely breakfast with family, go on family outings and appreciate the glory that is winter.

Awake to kids fighting, major blizzard, and power failure

Take dog to the vet for tinsel extraction

Planning for New Year`s Eve

Plan to attend fancy New Year`s Eve Ball. Purchase new formal wear. Plan to book baby-sitter.

All baby sitters booked since September. Hunt frantically for relative

Agree to 5 times the going rate for a sitter from the local homeless shelter.