The Ghost of Christmas Eve Past

Tomorrow Jews around the world will be making Chinese restaurants feel like it’s Christmas. Many will opt for take out, but the Fussies are going to brave the crowds and head out into the world. I can’t say I’m too fond of Chinese take-out.

Today, however, you couldn’t get me outside. It’s madness out there. Even Monday was a disaster. You should have seen the Trader Joe’s parking lot. The situation was made worse given the increase of business the HoneyBaked Ham store experiences this time of year.

I found myself driving over the grass from one parking lot to the next in order to snag an empty parking spot. Somehow the collective hysteria is contagious. Maybe next year I’ll set up a table outside the HoneyBaked Ham store and wage a public awareness campaign to alert people of the consequences that come from heating up one of those lovely hams.

So Christmas is tomorrow. And since I’m having a lazy day, I’ve got a lazy post to match.

2009 – Hamtastic
The first Christmas Eve post on the FLB was the opening salvo in the war against heated HoneyBaked hams. It’s an argument based on logic. It attempts to appeal to common sense. I even included a helpful link to the “serving tips” from the store itself. If my efforts saved just one ham from disaster, it would have been all worthwhile.

2010 – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
This was the year that I really got into the Christmas spirit. Earlier in the month I had spent some time getting ahead of holiday preparations, and wrote about wine, food, gifts and such. This post brought all of it together, and of course also warned about the tragedy of the ham. But it ended with a link to one of my favorite Christmas songs.

2011 – The Post Before Christmas
Technically, this one was written on December 23, but I took a stab at writing a post in the style of a famous Christmas poem. Mostly it’s about HoneyBaked ham. Because if I couldn’t convince people using reasoned argument, maybe they would be more persuaded in verse? This is still one of my favorite posts, as it’s hard to not smile when thinking about the ridiculousness of it all.

2012 – AskTP – All I Want for Christmas
I would have been smart to do this again in 2014. Right now I’m sitting on a pile of unanswered questions. Oh well. Most notably, this was the first Christmas Eve post that HoneyBaked ham didn’t even get mentioned.

2013 – To Have and To Have Not
Man, I do love that Pope Francis. Around Christmas last year he made a call for justice and compassion around the world. As fate would have it, some reader of the local paper published an op-ed against justice and compassion. So this was a good segue into talking about hunger and the struggles of those on public assistance. But somehow I was also able to squeeze in a reminder about the ham thing too.

Do you ever get the feeling I’m a one-note Johnny?