Hey there, folks! Welcome to the 2014 holiday season! You probably should have started preparing months ago, around January 15^th, but hey, Netflix isn’t going to watch itself, am I right? I mean, sure, all those hours of watching Breaking Bad won’t get you a closet full of perfectly wrapped presents, a gourmet Christmas dinner, or even a token holiday boyfriend to show off to your judgey aunt, but isn’t that Walter White just a hoot? All that meth dealing to make money when my sister Mary could have shown him how to feed his family of four on just $5 a week!

But don’t you fret. I have all the holiday wisdom you need to make it through this year and straight on into 2015. And of course, now that you know better, you should start prepping for next Christmas as soon as you get through this one. Here are my tips for a holly, jolly Christmas. They’ll help you through economic insecurity, your family’s judgmental questions, and even your racist great-uncle’s glowering stare at your new Italian boyfriend!

1.      I shouldn’t even need to say this, but the only way to fund a full a holiday meal is extreme couponing. Now I’m no pro like my sister, so I’ll leave the teaching to her, but there’s no need to pay more than 25 cents for any one food item. Ever. You’d be amazed at what a delicious holiday meal you can make with expired meat, dented, canned tomato sauce, and the Goldfish that are on special this week. And any whiners will be reassured with a tasty dessert: 2 for 1 yogurt that also has a half off coupon!

2.      Extreme couponing is also a great way to save on gifts. Sure, your 15-year-old daughter may be upset that all she got this year was a 25 pack of Charmin, but she’ll need to wipe up all those tears with something, won’t she?

3.      If you do plan on buying “real” gifts, make sure to take advantage of shopping holidays. Not just Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, but other national holidays, too. You’ve already missed Memorial Day, the 4^th of July, Labor Day, and Columbus Day, but what about Veteran’s Day? All of those soldiers didn’t fight and possibly die just so you could miss out Macy’s One Day Only Veteran’s Day Sale and the chance to save 30% off when you spend $150 or more on your Macy’s credit card. God bless America, indeed!

4.      Now that we’ve gone over how to save some dough this holiday season, let’s move on to something more important: making your terrible life seem enviable to all of your former high school classmates and distant family members. First off, you’re going to have to work on improving yourself RIGHT NOW. Thanksgiving is just three weeks away. That gives you three weeks to get yourself ready to make Billy the quarterback rue the day he decided not to ask you to prom when he runs into you at your hometown supermarket or, better yet, the local dive bar. It’s best if you start dieting and hitting the gym really hard. I know “body positivity” is all the rage right now, but flat abs never hurt anyone, now did they? And while you’re on the elliptical, why not practice making your job sound way more important than it is? Here are some businessey acronyms to get you started: B2B, KPI, IPO. I also recommend replacing “assistant” with “associate” and “waitress” with “customer service representative.”

5.      If you’re single, NOW is the time to start looking. If you’re still single on Thanksgiving, you’re practically guaranteed to spend New Year’s Eve alone, clutching a bottle of cheap champagne and softly crying in a corner while all your friends proclaim their love with a midnight kiss. So download no fewer than five dating apps on to your phone, but don’t stop there. Join singles social sports leagues, singles Meetup groups, and go speed dating at least once a week.

6.      If you’ve followed my tips so far, you should be ready for a great holiday season. But don’t forget that while you’ve embarked on a path of money saving and self-aggrandizement, your family hasn’t changed. So when your grandmother asks why you didn’t bother to comb your hair, or your mother asks you where the bottom half of your mini skirt went, or your great uncle tells your new boyfriend that he looks “terroristy,” don’t forget the number one way to get through the holiday season with grace and poise: booze!

7.      Most importantly of all, enjoy yourself! After New Year’s passes it’s just months of bleak weather leading into tax season. And the start of next year’s holiday preparation, of course!

Dear Diary,

I’m beginning to think this isn’t an “unpaid internship.”  I’ve been here for six months. I work 18-hour days, and I’ve accidentally electrocuted myself six times while tweaking the iPad Air.

I thought it would be such an honor to be a real Santa’s Elf, but I’ll tell ya, my old job at Keebler is looking pretty good right now. In fact, I’m beginning to think that Mr. Santa Claus is nothing more than an obese, psychotic, megalomaniac with a manic obsession with Christmas.

Sure, there’s cocoa. Yeah, there are lots of freshly baked Christmas cookies lying around. But all the good stuff goes straight to Mr. Claus’s jiggling belly, and we get thrown the leftover scraps like pigs – if there is anything left by the time my break rolls around, that is.

Being one of Santa’s Elves means that the Clauses and the head elves can treat us like crap, just because they know the prestige of working here is enough to make us stay. They take us on as “apprentices” for an undefined period of time, and justify their lack of compensation with phrases like “you’re paid in experience,” “this builds your resume,” and “indentured servitude isn’t slavery.”

 Every day, we wake up in our cots (we sleep about 20 elves to one room) at 4:30 a.m., to arrive in Santa’s Workshop by 5 a.m. We work straight through until noon, when we’re are allowed to break only if we need to relieve ourselves. Mr. Claus comes by periodically to check in and do impromptu quality checks. Then it’s back to work until 11 p.m., when we get our measly meal of lukewarm cocoa and burnt sugar cookies. We clean up until midnight, and walk home through the freezing wind and snow back to the dormitories. Then, we do it all over again.

 And the Christmas music! I laugh bitterly when I hear that humans get sick of it after a few weeks – imagine hearing it every single, solitary day. It doesn’t matter if “Deck the Halls” is sung by a country musician, a rapper, or an opera singer – it’s still the same fucking song, over and over. In fact, I’ve heard that Mr. Claus uses this tool to torture elves he catches snoozing on the job. He’ll lock them up in the closet with only a locked iPad, and make them listen to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” on repeat for hours. Sometimes, I can still hear them screaming as they rock back and forth in agony. 

But what choice do I have? The job market for elves is dwindling ever since the market crashed, and they realized that they can replace us with machines and even cheaper labor (dwarves). And of course, I have to compete with the elves who studied engineering and computer science in ways I’ve never had to before. I’ve always been told that my doll-making ability was excellent, and I’m not bad with train sets, either. But Final Fantasy XIV on PS4? I’m in over my head. 

I just have to pray that this apprenticeship opens doors for me as a managing Christmas elf. Then maybe I’ll get health insurance and a paid vacation. I want to go somewhere, anywhere, that doesn’t have snow.

Dear Tom,

I really liked you. I even liked how much you love Christmas. Your intense, genuine love of whimsy and life’s magical moments is enough to make any girl swoon. But this, this is a little too much.

First of all, I’d like to know if you even considered how my landlord would react to finding out that there was a partridge in a pear tree in a pet-free building. Not to mention the turtledoves, “French” hens, colly birds and don’t even get me started on the swans. Because, I can tell you, it was not too pretty and I’m now looking at a very homeless Christmas if those people on Craigslist don’t get back to me about the opening on their couch in what can only be described as a tenement building taken over by frat boys. So thank you for that.

Also, I know that in a popular Christmas carol all is beautiful and joyful and the angels are singing, but did you know that in real life partridges are fucking mean? Like, really mean. Luckily for me, my doctor said that the eye pecking I received upon arriving at my apartment last night won’t cause any permanent blindness. And, you would love this, I even got a red and green eye patch to celebrate the season. Yay.

And imagine my surprise, in coming back from my doctor’s appointment to find two turtledoves standing over the bloodied corpse of the partridge. Guess things got a little too real while I was gone, huh?

This is when I started calling you. But you must have been too busy at some organic farm up-state buying some more hens. (But just so you know, putting little berets on them does not make them French. It’s actually a specific breed. Look it up.)

You DID somehow manage to look up what a colly bird is, though, since I came home from work the other day to four of them in living room. FOUR. That’s a lot of bird feces. Luckily, I had finally managed to get the turtle doves and the hens to a shelter, so they were it for the night.

But, then more showed up, faster than I could get rid of them. So here I am, surrounded by six geese, who when they aren’t a-laying, are a-fighting with the seven swans, who I assume you mean to leave a-swimming in my bathtub. And of course there are the eight maids-a-milking who never go home and who cower in fear whenever I offer them water. Are they slaves, Tom? Did you get me TRAFFICKED HUMAN BEINGS for Christmas?

Speaking of trafficked human beings, I think the ladies dancing and lords-a-leaping you sent, after I changed the locks, might be some combination of prostitutes and strippers. Because I’ve seen a few too many naked human beings in the past few days and been propositioned just one too many times. And I may not be religious, but I can tell you for sure that the baby Jesus would NOT approve of what those ladies have done with my Christmas tree ornaments.

Really, though, the 11 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming were the last straw. It’s four in the morning, Tom, and they’re still drumming. STILL. Which is why I find myself here, writing you this email, since your phone seems to be broken. I assume your computer is at least working, because I can’t imagine how a man would get his hands on 50 trafficked human beings without a phone or a computer.

I think you know where this email is headed, Tom. It’s over. This level of enthusiasm is just too much. I know I told you how much it upset me that my ex never made me feel special, that I loved grand romantic gestures, but I just never expected this. And, to be brutally honest, this entire 12 days of Christmas scheme seems to lack foresight.

And, while we’re at it, can I just remind you that Christmas isn’t even 12 days away yet? I’m not sure if you just couldn’t count or maybe you had five extra day of surprises planned for me (and, to be honest, that very thought terrifies me). I know that we had an early “couples Christmas” planned with some friends, but, still, if you’re going to recreate a Christmas carol, shouldn’t you at least get the math right? In fact, if we’re going to get really technical, I googled it and the 12 days of Christmas actually start ON Christmas, so you’re about three weeks too early.

Please, just mail me my things, so I can move on. And don’t expect the five gold rings back, either. They’re the only valuable, worthwhile gift from this whole song and there’s a Cash for Gold place near the tenement/frat house apartment I hope to move into. I need to get together first and last month’s rent somehow.

I hope you that this email doesn’t ruin the merry Christmas that I know you looked forward to so much. No, actually, I’m not that big of a person, Tom. I hope you get fucking coal.

Sincerely,

Christina

Pre New Year’s Apathy (pri nu yɪərs æpəɵi): A state of total disinterest in self-improvement during the month of December, usually characterized by the excuse “I’ll take care of it after New Year’s; it’s my resolution.” I’m suffering from the worst case of Pre New Year’s Apathy this year. Today, instead of going to the gym, I hit up KFC and then Dunkin Donuts. I figured I’d just lose the weight in the new year.”

Presign: (prɪˈzaɪn) To resign from a position before actually acquiring said position. “I heard you didn’t get the promotion, man. I’m sorry.” “What? Nah, I presigned. I’m way too overqualified for this.”  Origin: Susan Rice’s decision to withdraw her name for consideration as Secretary of State. 

The following letter was found by a postal worker in a New Jersey United States Postal Service mail processing center and promptly sent into The Gabbler. The letter contained no name or return address by which to identify this “Natalie,” but nonetheless, we forwarded it along to Santa Claus, who we are hoping will help a sister out this Christmas.

Dear Santa,

Please don’t tell my mom — or anyone, really — that I’m writing to you!!!  You probably know what I’m about to say because you see people when they’re sleeping and know when they’re awake and all that other magical stuff, but just in case you don’t, I have to tell you a secret: I’m Jewish. But the truth is, Santa, I’m writing to you because Christmas seems…awesome.

It’s not that I want to stop being Jewish or anything. I love matzah ball soup, bagels, knishes, challah (it’s the BEST for french toast), latkes, and kugels. You name it! The only kind of gross thing is gelfite fish, and I just feed it under the table to our family dog, Gentile! Plus, anytime I go to a friend’s house and their mom cooks something that smells really gross, I just get all quiet and politely ask if it’s “Kosher.” It never is, so I just tell them that it’d be safest if I have just a cookie or something.  I can’t wait for my bat mitzvah, either – I hear you make out like a bandit ($$$). Plus, we get all our Jewish holidays off in addition to Christian holidays, even if we have a test that day! Sweet! So yeah, being a Jew is great.

Look, I’m not even sure if you’re real. My dad says that you’re “nothing but a symbol of the loss of religion at the hands of consumerism” but I tried Googling that and I kept seeing pictures of President Obama with devil horns. Weird, huh? So maybe I’m writing to a big, fat nobody. But I’m kind of hoping you are real, because if all these rumors about Christmas Miracles are true, maybe you’re the only one who can help me.

Will you help me convince my parents to let me have a Christmas? Just one! I know that a Christmas tree is just a waste of a perfectly lovely pine tree and the world wastes enough trees as it is– according to my mom, anyways – but nine lone candles are nothing compared to a huge tree with glittering lights!  Never mind decorating the outside with thousands more and blow up Santas and fake snow machines! Jeez.

Plus, the PRESENTS. We get eight, if a Jewish kid is LUCKY. One for each night of Hannukah. (I already tried pointing out that we really should get nine presents, considering that the menorah technically has nine candles and all, but my mom just laughed at me.) But, like, my friend Haley is Catholic and she got 26 presents last year. And she even told me her family only goes to church twice a year and her dad sleeps the whole time! (Not that I’m trying to get Haley or her dad on the naughty list or anything, Santa. I’m just a little upset.) Plus, you know what? Those 26 presents weren’t even including her stocking!

And you know what else? Gelt chocolate isn’t even that good. Like sure,  chocolate is chocolate, but  I don’t know who makes this gelt crap. It always tastes stale. I’ll take Christmas cookies and candy canes and those  yummy mint M&M’s that only come out around Christmas any day.

It’s just not fair, Santa. My friend Danny, who says his family is a “buncha atheists,” (he says that means that his parents are in a fight with God or something) still gets Christmas. And every time I watch  Austin and Ally or iCarly, there is, like, always a Christmas special. Don’t even get me started on the 25 Days of Christmas on ABC Family!

So I’m asking you for one wish, Santa. If you’re out there, and this letter makes it to the North Pole in time, please convince my parents to let us have Christmas. Just once!  Stockings, mistletoe, tinsel, carolers, Black Friday, the works. And lots and lots of presents– at least 30!  I just want one year where my dad doesn’t make me listen to Adam Sandler’s Hannukah song on repeat, you know?

Thank you, and Merry Christmas!

Sincerely,

Natalie

Many of my fellow extreme couponers would say that with only two weeks left until Christmas Eve, anyone thinking of starting their holiday shopping and still expecting to make off with discounts upwards of 90 percent is crazy. But not me. I’m just more extreme, I guess, because I think you, that’s right YOU, can follow a few simple steps to buy the Christmas presents of your loved one’s dreams at deep, deep discounts.

I mean, sure, ideally, you would all have nice, full stockpiles. Your garages would be overflowing with paper towels and shampoo and you would have forced your lazy 18 year old out of the house so that you can fill what used to be his bedroom with cans of spaghetti sauce.

See, with a stockpile, Christmas shopping is really just a simple matter of reflecting on your loved ones’ flaws and picking out the appropriate gift. Have a sister-in-law with the world’s dirtiest kitchen? Some paper towels and 409 from the garage should do the trick! What about that cousin with terrible halitosis? Right on down to the toothpaste aisle in your basement! Or how about your mother’s pathetic attempt at Christmas dinner? Time to hit up the pre-cooked meals in your deep freezer!

But I get it, okay? Not everyone has been extreme couponing for the past ten years, long before it was a fad. Not everyone has twenty subscriptions to all the local papers with in a 50 mile radius, just for the Sunday coupon inserts. But like, I said, I’m extreme. I can work with anyone, even people who live in full-priced ignorance. So here we go.

Step 1: Get your hands on as many coupon inserts as you can. I cannot overemphasize how important this is. At this point, your neighbor’s recycling is probably your best bet, since all the Sunday papers came yesterday and there’s only two more Sundays between today and Christmas Eve. So quietly wait until your foolish neighbors head out to the store (without their coupons, most likely) and then sneak into their most likely unlocked garages and take as many inserts as you can get your extreme little hands on. I have a “friend” who gets up to 20 extra coupon inserts this way, every week. And remember, it’s not stealing if they were going to recycle them anyway.

Step 2: Cross reference all the coupons in the insert with the deals at all supermarkets within a 50 mile radius of your home. 50 miles might seem like a long way to drive for free toilet paper, but only to people who are stupid enough to spend money on toilet paper when the universe basically gives it out for free. Luckily for you, the time you spend driving you’ll make up by being able to quickly cross reference coupon deals using the internet. Just Google your store name and “coupon database” and you should be able to quickly organize any in store deals with the coupons from your inserts.

Step 3: Calculate the best deals you could get by applying the coupons with in store deals. This is the key to all extreme couponing. So, for example, look for any buy one get one free deals and see if you have any manufacturer’s coupons from your inserts to apply with this deal. If you do, you’re most likely going to buy it. Because you can, for pennies on the dollar.

Step 4: Make a list of any items that you can buy for 75 percent off or more. You will be buying all of these items. Clip as many coupons as you can for these, using every single one of the inserts you borrowed from your unsuspecting neighbors. And remember, if you have 40 coupons for cans of soup, you will buying at least 40 cans of soup. No holding back.

Step 5: Make a trip to Kinkos to copy your coupons. You know, most extreme couponers refuse to make several copies of manufacturers coupons because they claim that the stores will only accept originals. Which is true. Unless you copy your coupons onto glossy magazine paper at a Kinkos so they look just like the original insert! The only problem with this is that all that fancy shmancy copying can start to add up and really eat into your savings. So that’s why I always recommend that you younger, more attractive extreme couponers wear a nice push up bra and seem really impressed by the young, virginal man making a single copy for you. He’ll be so impressed by your boobs that he won’t even notice that you’ve swiped some glossy paper, figured out his employee pin, and are headed over to the self-serve copy machine in the corner. If you’re not attractive enough to pull this off yourself, feel free to use a budding young niece or daughter!

Step 6: Go shopping! This is the fun part! Now you get to drive yourself to all the grocery stores in the area and stick it to em. Most importantly, you want to get as much of each item as you can. If that means that no one in your area will be able to by shampoo for a few weeks, that’s their problem. Another tip: if you’re short of coupons, look for any friendly old people in the store. Most old people are lonely and a good conversation with a stranger in a supermarket or department store is probably all the social interaction they’ll have for the week, if not the whole month, so they’re especially prone to your charms They also have a tendency to walk around with their coupons out in their carts so that they won’t forget what they’re buying. So casually ask to see a picture of their grandchildren and while their searching through their wallets, just swipe whatever coupons are in their carts. They probably won’t even realize and you can get some great deals this way! And always remember: you are the customer and you have an absolute right to play the system to get as many items as possible for basically free. Do not put up with any, pardon my French, but any bullshit from zit-faced cashiers looking to put coupon limits on your shopping freedom.

Step 7: Take home your winnings and decide what to give your lucky family and friends for Christmas! Now’s the time to get really creative. Sure, you now have a massive stockpile of groceries that you got for upwards of 75% off, but it’s the season for giving! So set aside at least 25 percent of what you’ve purchased to use as gifts. Maybe set aside some of those 100 calorie packs for your fat sister? And that Bean-O would be great for your neighbor with that flatulence problem! Be creative. And if you really get stuck: toilet paper. EVERYONE needs toilet paper, believe me.

If you follow these simple steps, you too can get everyone you care about thoughtful and cheap presents for this Christmas season. And you can do it all in the remaining two weeks before the holiday.

Some quick, additional tips:

-If you go to a store that has rules about coupon limits, pack a wig and a scarf in your car! That way you can go to drop off your first haul, put on the wig and the scarf and — blammy! — you’re Rita Shopsumoore, a completely different lady at the store using coupons that she found in a completely different Sunday insert!

-If you’re really feeling pressed for coupon use, feel free to forge some on Microsoft Publisher. The key is to scan the bar code of a coupon of an equivalent amount into the fake coupon and distract the cashier as he or she rings up that coupon, so no one notices that your Dove body wash is ringing up as discounted even though the register marks it as a Nabisco coupon!

So Merry Christmas. May your holiday be warm, bright and happy. And may your couponing always be extreme.