Column: A happy Christmas is in the cards

Do you remember mail? It came in envelopes and someone would leave it in a box at the end of your driveway? You’re right, it does sound ridiculous.

Anyway, this is the one time of year when real mail makes a comeback. That’s because many people still send Christmas cards: For the price of a stamp (whatever that is), this allows you to share some tangible holiday cheer, not to be confused with the digital holiday cheer that involves putting someone’s head on a dancing elf. As hilarious as that may be.

Of course there are some questions involved with holiday cards, such as whether you should display them prominently around your house, or leave them in an unkempt pile on your kitchen counter until you throw them away on Dec. 26. Neither of these choices is necessarily correct, except for the second one.

Then there’s the question of what kind of card to send. There are several options, some of which even involve using glitter that spills out of the envelope when someone opens it, which is a great idea if you’re planning to send cards mostly to people you hate. If that’s not the case, though, consider one of the following:

1) Kid cards. Somewhere along the line it became a law that if you had a child between the ages of 0 and college, it was required that you stick their picture on your Christmas card. This made some sense back in the pre-Facebook days, but it’s less necessary now that you digitally document your child’s every milestone and achievement, and also all those times when they’re more adorable than all the other kids, which is always.

I’m among those guilty of using this method, partly because there’s now a certain level of Mutually Assured Christmas Card Destruction: Everyone involved agrees to keep proliferating children-centric Christmas cards so as not to be branded as the one set of parents not obsessively proud of their kids’ sparkling photographic charisma. Who knows what the other parents would think if you sent out a card that shunned your own children in favor of say, the baby Jesus, who is much less likely to be posed in a Santa hat in front of a fake fireplace. Which reminds me:

2) Jesus cards. These are cards meant to share in a joyous celebration of the birth of Christ, and to remind you that at some point you became a godless heathen who puts his own kid on his Christmas cards instead of God’s kid. (And are thus implicitly hell-bound, Merry Christmas.) Of course, you also might not be sending a Jesus card because you’re Jewish. Which brings me to:

3) “Seasons Greetings” cards. Since most families these days are made up of people practicing any number of religions, often at the same time, you might be safer with a “Season’s Greetings” card appropriate for Christian, Jew, Muslim, Wiccan, agnostic and atheist alike. Because even if we have differing beliefs, at the end of the day, there’s one thing we can all agree on: that it is currently a season.

4) Cards with side-splitting comical cartoons in which Santa’s butt crack is showing. Please stop sending me these. You know who you are.

5) Spite cards. These are cards sent specifically to arrive on Dec. 24, thus giving the receiver no time to send a card in response. Spite-card senders have been known to spend months mapping out a delivery timetable so as to ensure maximum guilt for the recipients, which is what the holidays are all about.

Wait, scratch that — I read my notes wrong. Perhaps what the holidays are really about, among other things that may or may not involve guilt, is slowing down long enough to appreciate what you’ve got and share some of that aforementioned good cheer — maybe even by writing out an actual card or two. If you manage to spread even a little old-fashioned holiday joy — real, physical joy that you can touch and smell, not eJoy — maybe it makes all the writing and stamping worthwhile.

But if I see my kids in that pile on your counter, next year you’re getting the dancing elf.

Column: What did Ella Fitzgerald do to deserve Rod Stewart?

Followers of this column may recall that I am used to receiving emails from famous people — for instance, there was the time that Joan Collins sent me three identical emails about her new jewelry line. Of course that was in 2007 and I haven’t heard from her since, but I’m sure she’ll get back in touch with me if she has anything really important to share, such as another new jewelry line.

But I have to admit I was surprised this week when I got an email from none other than Rod Stewart. At first I wondered what Rod Stewart could possibly want with me — I figured he wasn’t emailing to ask for $5 like Barack Obama and Joe Biden do two or three times a day, since Rod Stewart has plenty of money, which he uses on important charitable activities such as buying himself new wives.

As it turns out, though, Rod was writing me to let me know about his impending Christmas album, “Merry Christmas, Baby.” (I use the word “impending” because “upcoming” somehow didn’t seem sufficiently apocalyptic.) It was the subject line of the email that immediately caught my eye: “New album featuring collaborations with Michael Bublé & Ella Fitzgerald,” a statement so fundamentally wrong that I’m fairly sure I heard the heavens crack open and rain a torrent of bitter tears for all eternity.

I’m not talking about the Michael Bublé part — I don’t know much about Michael Bublé other than that he’d probably be right at home next to Rod Stewart, perhaps even joined with him at the torso, like Chang and Eng. It’s the second part, about dueting with Ella Fitzgerald: For one thing, Ella Fitzgerald died in 1996, and for another, I’m pretty sure her final words were, “Well, at least now I’ll never have to do a duet with Rod Stewart.”

Not that I’m completely against duets with dead people. I didn’t really mind the one Natalie Cole did with her late father, Nat King Cole, which you couldn’t help but think was sweet and moving as long as you’d taken enough Zoloft. But there are plenty of far worse examples, such as the album “Duets” by Frank Sinatra, who was alive at the time but only technically.

But I’ll go on the record as being completely against the idea of a Rod Stewart/Ella Fitzgerald “collaboration,” which is really only a collaboration in the way that eating a hamburger is a collaboration with the cow. First of all, Ella was known as the “First Lady of Song,” and pairing her with Rod Stewart would seem to indicate that he was perhaps the “President of Song.” This is completely and entirely false unless the song in question happens to be “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” in which case he would be running unopposed.

Just so as not to jump to any conclusions, though, I did watch the “trailer” for the album, but it didn’t have any snippets from the Ella duet. (Although it did have a clip of a Christmas video with Cee Lo Green, who looked sort of like Burl Ives, if Burl Ives had been eaten by Cee Lo Green.) It also had plenty of Rod Stewart, shamelessly showing off how he has monopolized the United Kingdom’s entire supply of gaudily colored plaid jackets. Rod is now 67 and apparently can no longer lift his arms above chest level, possibly because his skin has been tightened so many times it’s started to affect his armpits.

Frankly, though, I don’t have to hear it to know that his duet with Ella is a bad idea. I’m not saying Rod Stewart should never sing with other people — for instance, there was that time he sang that song from “The Three Musketeers” with Bryan Adams and Sting, which is still reportedly in heavy rotation at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

But when it comes to Ella — who in her day had mopped up the floor with such duet partners as Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby — he’d be doing himself a favor by sticking with someone more in his league, and alive enough to make the decision on her own.

I’m thinking Joan Collins may be available.

COLUMN: Some Santa Ho-Ho's and No-No's

MEMO
To: Mall Santas
From: Management

Welcome aboard in your new role as one of “Santa’s Helpers.” Please review the following guidelines carefully, so that the mall and its patrons can have a happy, healthy and non-litigious holiday season.

1.) As you’ve no doubt heard, “Ho Ho Ho” is no longer considered an acceptable holiday greeting, having been deemed potentially offensive to women and gardeners. The substitute “Ha Ha Ha” has also been banned, as it is possibly damaging to a child’s self-esteem. Also, Santas overheard saying “Merry Christmas” will be summarily removed from the premises.

Instead, we recommend you listen attentively to the children, nod, and affect a blank stare devoid of any emotion, particularly fear. They can sense fear.

2.) Please keep in mind that not all children believe in Santa Claus or celebrate Christmas. However, please make no attempt to determine this based on physical cues, such as yarmulkes or “Proud Jehovah’s Witness” T-shirts, as this would be considered profiling. If you have any questions, please consult the mall’s attorney, who will be standing behind the fake snowman.

3.) Plump Santas are no longer considered “jolly.” Instead, they serve as a bleak reminder of our nation’s struggle with obesity and are a poor role model to our increasingly overweight and inactive children. Please make every effort to appear slim and fit, and to encourage children to leave you celery and soy products rather than cookies and hot chocolate on Christmas Eve. Also, please note that smoking is permitted in the break room only.

4.) Please do not promise children that Santa will bring them anything in particular, as promising a gift that the parents cannot afford or do not approve of could result in a lengthy and expensive lawsuit. Be pleasant but non-committal. If the child is persistent, try to distract him with one of the celery sticks we now give out in lieu of candy canes; if that doesn’t work, send him behind the snowman to speak to the attorney.

5.) It has been deemed inappropriate, and a serious legal risk, to have children sitting on a strange bearded man’s lap. This year the children will sit on a stool, separated from you by a sheet of soundproof Plexiglas. This also serves the purpose of keeping you from being able to hear their gift requests (see No. 4).

6.) Scientists have determined that eight flying reindeer traveling around the entire world in one night would emit more than 40,000 tons of greenhouse gases, which would have a profound effect on global warming. As modern children are particularly sensitive to this issue, it is important that if they ask about the reindeer, you tell them politely that they are all dead.

7.) The concept of elves has been determined to be offensive to a host of protected groups, including little people, pointy eared people and people with high squeaky voices. However, so as to give you the support you need, we are looking at several possible replacements. Right now we’re leaning toward attorneys.

We’re sure that if you follow these simple guidelines you will succeed in making the children’s visits with Santa as unremarkable and non-offensive as possible. Welcome aboard the team here at the mall, and have a merry … a happy … Oh, whatever.

I'm currently driving around the mall parking lot looking for an open space; this “Best of Chianca” column is from 2007. Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

COLUMN: Wishing you an off-kilter Christmas (movie)

When I was a kid, every year around this time I would watch “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” I did this despite the fact that critics regularly put this 1964 movie on their list of the worst films of all time, probably because of its inane plot, juvenile dialogue, bargain-basement costumes and the fact that it appears to have been filmed entirely in a single room that may or may not have been made of cardboard.

I think I may have watched it because as a child, it’s comforting to know that Santa, in addition to bringing you toys every year, is also capable of warding off an alien invasion if necessary. Also, New York’s Channel 9 scheduled it on a Saturday afternoon every December — your choice was either that or reruns of “Hee-Haw” on Channel 11, and Roy Clark certainly never conquered any aliens, with the possible exception of Minnie Pearl. (Incidentally, the entire “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is embedded below via Hulu, if you ever have a spare 80 minutes and have a choice between watching that and hitting yourself in the forehead with a plank.)

Of course, there are plenty of other holiday-themed movies that don’t seem to quite get the spirit of the season. Some are downright horrifying, like “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” or anything starring Tim Allen. But others are only just slightly off, like a sugarplum left under your pillow one night too long. (Or wherever the heck those sugarplums were.)

One that comes to mind is “Gremlins,” the 1984 Joe Dante film about horrible little creatures that terrorize a small town at Christmastime, and breakdance. It’s noteworthy not so much for the scene where a Gremlin explodes in a microwave oven (no matter how many thousands of important microwave experiments it may have inspired among America’s youth) but for Phoebe Cates’ speech about the time her father dressed up as Santa Claus and died a horrible death while coming down their chimney. Sadly, no transcript of the speech was included with the thousands of Gremlins dolls under 5-year-olds’ Christmas trees that year.

Another is John Hughes’ “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” (1992), in which cute (by which I mean possibly sociopathic) Macaulay Culkin gets left behind at Christmas by his parents again, this time in New York City. I thought the first “Home Alone” movie was just stupid, but in watching the second one I realized it teaches children a valuable Yuletide lesson: If Joe Pesci ever tries to break into the house, electrocute him.

And I was particularly disturbed by 2004’s “The Polar Express.” Much has been made of how creepy Robert Zemeckis’ animated characters look, which is exactly the kind of press you want when you spend $166 million making a movie (which, granted, included Tom Hanks’ standard salary, $164 million). Personally, I saw this entire film and don’t remember a single shred of the plot, and yet the Steven Tyler-inspired Aerosmith elf who pops up at the end haunts my dreams, with those pointy ears and gigantic lips — I have visions of him jumping out from behind my Christmas tree and gumming me to death.

The good news is, over the last few years I’ve been able to introduce my kids, now 9 and 11, to a few holiday movies that are outlandish enough to rise above, say, the goop on ABC Family’s “25 Days of Christmas” (in which a grouchy businessperson or Tom Arnold learns the true meaning of the season), but not so bizarre as to keep them up Christmas Eve, not from excitement but from the fear that they will be attacked by Gremlins, or Joe Pesci.

Their hands-down favorite is of course Bob Clark’s “A Christmas Story” (1983), which does off-kilter Christmas just the right way: with fake swearing, almost shooting your eye out and eating mashed potatoes like a piggy. It shows that it’s possible to make a holiday movie that’s funny, moving and even a little bit subversive without being gross or stupid.

If only the Christmas goose had exploded in the Chinese restaurant microwave, it would have been perfect.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Bob

Does Dylan's gravelly voice go with Christmas? Yes, there are times when it sounds patently, hilariously ridiculous, but for the most part, to me, it seems heartfelt, nostalgic, mournful, hopeful and funny – actually, sometimes all at once. Unlike some other holiday albums from singers with more traditional (read: good) voices, he seems to really be feeling “The Christmas Blues,” not just showing off his pipes.

Read the rest at Popdose.com.