Christmas Against Humainty

Now begins the week that time forgot. The week between Christmas and New Year.

This is my favorite week of the year. In a couple of days I’ll have no idea if it’s Monday or Tuesday or if I’m really a person at all. I will be tethered to no one and no thing. I will become one with my couch and football games and Ernest Hemingway books. I think this week is the true miracle of Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanza. These few days when appointments no longer matter. When our only responsibilities are to leftovers and sweet potato pie.

This year Jaimie and I spent Christmas with her family in Richmond Hill. Richmond Hill is a small town off I-95 about 20 miles south of Savannah.

I love going to Savannah because it gives me a chance to visit two of my favorite coffee shops in world. The first is Galleria Espresso on Bull Street. Unfortunately it was closed on the 25th and 26th, so as a consolation prize I spent my mornings at Mate Factor. Mate Factor is a coffee shop specializing in Yerba Mate a couple of blocks off of Forsythe Park. It’s run by a Christian Sect called the 12 Tribes. They’re religious hippies. They all live in a giant house across the street and wear tight rolled parachute pants. Part of me thinks I would have been happy living in a religious community. Occasionally I fantasize about leaving it all and joining a monastery, or becoming a member of 12 Tribe. The problem is Jaimie could never handle it. She’d ask way too many questions, and questions are the downfall of most religious endeavors.

On Christmas Day we ate cheese and crackers and kalamata olives while we opened presents in the living room. Her sister Erica made a ham and squash casserole. We washed it down with coffee and tea and hot cocoa while munching on these tiny chocolate cookies that are highly addictive.

Once we were properly satiated, and by that I mean stuffed, we began our annual holiday tradition.

Cards Against Humanity.

For those who don’t know, Cards Against Humanity is a game where the contestants attempt to come up with the funniest answer to the question presented. The cards are crude. Oh so crude. Full of sex jokes and bathroom jokes of the most inappropriate nature.

It might seem like a weird holiday tradition, but the five people gathered around the table are anything but normal! Jaimie’s mother is the daughter of a Savannah Rock DJ and her father makes knives and jumped out of air planes in the army. Her sister makes funky little bookmarks and has two arms full of tattoos. Jaimie likes to pretend to be other people and I make my living telling strangers the intimate details of my life. It would be strange if our collection of misfits sat around and sang carols and talked about what we were thankful for. It wouldn’t feel right for us to recite ’Twas the Night Before Christmas in the shadow of a nativity scene.

What did feel right was the five of us laughing for three straight hours.

It felt right when Erica got up and and said, “She needed another dick. I mean DECK! AHHHH THIS GAME!”

It felt right Jaimie impersonating a screaming basketball until we were all crying, her father drinking Coke out of a square glass and her mother trying to record it all on her phone.

Cards Against Humanity for Christmas sure as shit wasn’t traditional.

But it was perfect.