Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Great Funny Christmas T-Shirts Surprise

By Clinton York


I host Christmas dinner every year at my home. This means that somewhere between 15 to 20 people show up at my house to eat good food and spend time with one another. I'm not complaining either, because I love my family. The problem is that as everyone has been getting older, they've started treating the even more and more formally. All I want is a relaxed, comfortable environment for us all to enjoy. Instead, I have people wearing sweaty suits and yelling at their kids for making too much noise. I'm going to have to fix this, and I think funny Christmas t-shirts are going to be the way to go.

The plan is to buy a whole bunch of funny Christmas t-shirts for everyone who we expect to come over for Christmas Day dinner. We're going to wrap them as presents and stack them next to the front door with everyone's name on them. As they come in, they get their gift immediately. They open it, and then they have a quick laugh at whatever ridiculous shirt I have picked out for them. Then the hammer falls, and I tell them that this year you have to go to the bedroom or bathroom and put it on. No questions asked.

The only person I'm really worried about is my Aunt Sue. There will be a couple of people who I need to pull aside, rationalize with, and explain things to before they'll eventually cave in and put the funny Christmas t-shirts on like good boys and girls. Aunt Sue won't wait for a private chat. She's going to flat-out refuse in front of God and all His creatures that she isn't going to waste all the time she spent dressing up, just to dress down in a t-shirt.

I don't want to thumb my nose at family in any way, but I'm not going to budge on this. I'm spending the money on the funny Christmas t-shirts for a reason. I'm not going to show favoritism by letting one person wear their fancy clothes and the make everyone else wear the shirts. If someone, especially my aunt, wants to raise a fuss about the situation...well, they can just go home.

You may think that I've just gone absolutely insane to risk ruining everyone's Christmas with something so silly. To me, though, it's not such a silly matter. My whole family has forgotten that Christmas is about sharing a good time with the people you love most in the world. The stuffy, formal, funeral-parlor clothes are just a symptom of the disease. Hopefully, my funny Christmas t-shirts are going to throw their formality right back in their face and help them realize how completely ridiculous they've become.




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