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 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