On the Eleventh Day of Christmas

a) “'tis the Season for Los Straitjackets” by Los Straitjackets
Where does surf music have no place? If you say Christmastime, fuck yourself. Christmas is actually a fantastic time for surf music.

Los Straitjackets' Christmas album sounds surprisingly at home in a collection of other festive records. It's all very silly, and the image of Santa hanging ten is hard to not imagine.

b) Arrested Development Christmas “In God We Trust” “Afternoon Delight”
Christmas pretty much takes a back seat in Arrested Development. Without lights set up in the dining room or event names like the “Christmas Pageant,” it would be impossible to tell what time of year it is in the O.C. (“Don't call it that...”).

But Arrested Development has always been family-oriented (in the plot, not in subject matter), which is a very Christmasy aspect. Granted, some of it is to an incestual degree, but there are still many instances of relatives coming through for each other. The friendship between Michael and Lindsay throughout “In God We Trust,” interrupted by their mother attempting to separate them feels very real and when they share their secrets over (I lost count) drinks, we see them as the closest members of the family, if only for this episode.

“Afternoon Delight” gets a little creepier when it comes familial relations. The titular song does not sound that dirty until you sing it to your niece. But the heart of the story comes from the Michael/George Michael dynamic. Instead of going to the Bluth Company's annual Christmas party, GM spends time with Yam (It's Ann...) and her family, whose Christmas party is celebrated on Bethlehem time (which I may or may not use as a legitimate excuse for being late form time to time). Fortunately he attends after he sneaks out during the second hour of silent prayer. A lot of other stuff happens—these are tightly-packed episodes—but it's all gold.

c) Cutting down trees

These past few years, my family has gone the route of pre-cut Christmas trees. Instead of the tradition of going out to a farm where pine trees grow like rows of prickly corn and cutting a tree down ourselves, we have invested in an already-dead one. Rather than spending hours in the frigid winds of Michigan winter, where the threat of hypothermia is only offset by the frustrations against other family members who would settle for just any ol' spruce with enough branches to cover the glaring bald spots, we found our last tree in twenty minutes and were on our way home.

See, I am very particular about which tree gets to warm up in our house each year and I get a special thrill from shopping the fucker down myself. Only the most pristine firs make the cut (so to speak) and it maddens me that some corporation thinks they can swoop in, deforest acres of miniature pine trees, and then attempt to sell them to me at 50 bucks a pop. You expect to take away the ritual of getting on my hands and knees in the wintery mud and feebly hack and saw for half an hour while the rest of the Slattery clan complains how cold it is until my arms feel as though I've Shakeweighted for ten days straight, and then ask me to be grateful?

Actually, you win. I'll take the Frasier Fir in the back there.