When I took my youngest son to get vaccinated at a nearby mall, they were already playing Christmas music, which suited the occasion. But rather than glower at the signs of an impending holiday season all around me, I’ve gotten hyped off of them.
So far I’ve held off on going Full Griswold until Thanksgiving, as I do every year.
I just have more license to indulge my holly-jollyness now.Īnd I plan to. I’d like to tell you that nearly dying was the main catalyst for this affection-the night after we all went to Lillie’s was the one where I dropped like a felled evergreen-but I’ve always been like this. I love helping the kids assemble a $15 gingerbread house kit that contains nothing but stale ingredients. I love pissing and moaning to my wife about Christmas parties that we weren’t invited to. I love the nationwide increase in open candy dishes right around this time. I love watching the same holiday specials and holiday movies over and over again. I love Thanksgiving for self-evident reasons. I love the entire holiday racket, from stem to stern.
I’ve made similar complaints, because I am a professional complainer. You know this because anytime someone you know sees a gingerbread latte on sale in September, they go SPRINTING to inform the rest of the world about the offense. I was perfect.Ĭhristmas comes earlier every year. I think I threw up in my hotel room a few hours later.
All I did was stand at the bar and look around at the pretty Christmas lights and holiday decor. I was already well into the standing-and-staring phase of inebriation, a phase any veteran drinker knows quite well. I don’t remember anything I drank at Lillie’s. Later that night, I got VERY drunk and dragooned the entire staff into going there. Every inch of the joint was glowing with 100 percent pure Christmas tackiness. I felt like a little boy in 1980 staring longingly through a window at FAO Schwarz. Nothing but garlands and strung-up lights and fluffy white trim. I glance through the window as I’m walking and then I stop, turn, and walk back to gaze through the window. The first of these nights, I’m walking to the site’s old office by Union Square when I pass by Lillie’s Victorian Establishment, a bar on East 17th Street. I was up in New York a while back to visit the Deadspin offices (back when we all worked there) and, more importantly, to get shitfaced with everyone on staff over the course of multiple nights. And buy Drew’s new book, The Night The Lights Went Out, through here. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season.