commandments for christmas
1. If you are to give hand-made gifts, make sure you buy them from somebody else with a huge mark up. It's not a real gift unless you buy it from the store.
2. Don't save your shopping for off-peak and accessible hours such as a weeknight. Go shopping the day after thanksgiving and christmas eve. Be sure to act surprised when the stores are packed.
3. For the bored housewife, the Home Shopping Network provides great christmas ideas as early as January. Buy several types of capodimonte because you never know when the receiver's tastes may change from flowerbaskets to single stem blue flowers decorated in blue glitter.
4. The middle-aged woman who subscribes to "Woman's World" is your best bet for getting homemade christmas cookies starting in mid-november.
5. According to pop psychologists, going to the mall is so stressful for men that it makes them physically ill. Women thrive. Long lines to the register, driving in the parking lot for half an hour to find parking, running from store to store and finding every one of them is out of Pokemon toys, and continuously being pushed out of the way by people blabbing on their cellphones and not watching where they are going is as good as having a multiple orgasm. Men are strange and find this stressful.
6. Deciding whose family to spend the holidays with is always easy. Temporarily break off the relationship.
7. If you don't have children for your parents to spoil as grandchildren, the family pet is guaranteed to be treated better than you ever were as a child.
8. It never fails. The 90 year old aunt is going to ask you again if you've tried drugs.
9. When the someone you love was picking out your gift, they were saying, "thank god, one down, ten more to go...."
10. This time of year makes it OK to listen to albums by Amy Grant, mariah Carey, n'sync because you have the excuse of not being able to find better christmas music.