A guest post by A. Nonymous

Most of us are not doing God’s work trading credit derivatives at
Goldman Sachs.   You may be stunned when I tell you this, because I
sure as heck was when I it found out:  the TARP program covers none of
our credit card bills.  Like, zero.  All of that means another tough,
tough Christmas, money-wise.   The desperate economy calls for
desperate measures to economize at Christmas.  Here are twelve ways
for the twelve days:

1.      The first thing to do is to keep doing more of what you’re already
doing:  bitching and complaining.  Cry poor mouth to everyone.  Tell
everyone you know how tough it is.  Make a Bill Clinton face while you
share people’s pain and make them feel yours.  Next you say,  “You
know, let’s make it easy this year, you don’t have to buy me
anything.”  Of course, that means you don’t have an obligation to buy
them anything!  That works with everyone except your kids.

2.      Tell your young kids Santa’s not real.  Kids as young as four are
old enough to get real in this day and age.  In Indonesia and Pakistan
kids are out sewing soccer balls to support a family at that age!  So
just explain to them that it’s all a scam meant to con them into good
behavior, tell them how much you know they wouldn’t want to connive in
such a fraud, and assure them you know they’ll behave perfectly well
without bribery.  They’ll thank you.  Someday.

3.      What about the older kids?  They’re all so eco-conscious these
days, and that’s an opportunity for the canny cheapskate.  Just tell
them instead of lame games for Wii and Xbox this year, you’re saving
the planet on their behalf by planting a tree with their name on it in
the Amazon!  You can even work up some kind of authentic-looking
certificate on the computer!  People in the carbon-credit business are
becoming billionaires doing just that, by the way.

4.      You still feel you need some real gifts?  Well how about re-gifts?
You’ve been given things you never opened — herbal soap, crème brûlée
mix, thermal bags for keeping wine cold — pass the parcel!  Just try
to remember not to give it to the person that gave it to you!

5.      Books are such a popular item at Christmas.  So many books can be
had for free!  Libraries put out boxes of new, unread, unmarked books
that they want to get rid of.   These include books about business,
money, and investing that are still very attractive and were timely
when they were published last year, but are entirely irrelevant under
current conditions.  Also look for container-loads of books about the
Bush and Clinton administrations, and anything by Dick Morris.   I
don’t normally advocate illegal behavior, but one exception could be
Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.  Bookstores are full of this one –
it’s the Obama playbook!   Somehow it just seems right to go in there
and liberate a copy or three, comrade!

6.      One of my cheap-ass friends used to always joke, “I wanted to buy
you a big plant for Christmas, but GM wouldn’t sell.”  What a laff
riot, and it got him off the hook for ever buying anything!     Of
course, now GM desperately wants to sell all its plants, so the 2009
revision of that joke is, “I wanted to buy you a big plant for
Christmas, but the Chinese bought them all!”  Ha ha!  Your friends
will be falling over, and they won’t even notice you didn’t buy a
round of drinks!

7.      Speaking of drinks, ‘tis the season to bend the elbow, so herewith
some recommendations from Chateau Wang.  First, drink cheap beer.  The
cheapest stuff in my local is also the original and greatest . . .
it’s Miller at $3.99 a six-pack, compared to $5.29 for Miller Light.
That make any sense to you?  Me neither, they take stuff out and
charge you more?    Forget that!  Next, drink cheap wine.  André’s
Cold Duck is back, it’s $4.99, and it’s as good as it was when you
were fourteen and sneaked it in the kitchen after the Thanksgiving
dinner was cleared away.  (You know you did.)

8.      As for food, the trick to economizing on food is not to cook any.
Instead, head over to your brother’s house and scrounge Christmas
dinner there.  You need to go unannounced, early in the day, in case
they have the same idea of coming over and scrounging from you.  If
that was the plan and your sister-in-law makes no move to put a turkey
in the oven, give her one of your Miller’s and she’ll at least come
through with some Dinty Moore.   Note:   If you were to show up on the
doorstep at 7:00 AM, there are secondary benefits – you can reconnect
with the Christmases of your childhood, when you punished everyone by
getting up too early, and you’ll get breakfast too.

9.      Here are the hard liquor recommendations from Chateau Wang.  You
want to drink cheap, cheap liquor too.  The venerable and cheap
bourbons and ryes from Old Huckaby, Rebel Heaven, and Elihu Walton
lack the sophistication of  single-malt Scotch, but they have all of
the wallop!  Also consider cheap and nasty tequila like Don Cheech and
 Señor Pepe brand – they mix great with green Gatorade!

10.     You don’t feel you can scrounge 100% at your sister-in-law’s
house?  Try this recipe that will cost about 25 cents:  Mix two cups
of flour with a quarter teaspoon each of baking power and salt, and
add up to two cups of water to make a heavy dough.  Add a few raisins
if you have any, tie it up in a clean handkerchief, and boil it in
water until it’s time to go home.  Then discard it.  Tell them it’s
the dumpling Oliver Twist had in the workhouse at Christmas.  Your
brother’s family doesn’t read!  They won’t know!  Ha ha! Give them a
copy of Rules For Radicals.

11.     Christmas trees are $60 at the VFW, and wreaths are $20.  That
make any sense to you?  Me neither, so here you have many ways to go.
You could wait until 4:30 on Christmas Eve, by which time the guy
working at VFW will have gone home and abandoned whatever Charlie
Brown Christmas trees he has left.  Freebie!  Option two, you may live
in a place where trees are plentiful all around – neighbor’s yards,
parks, and so on, if you “catch” my “drift” (wink wink!)  Freebie!
Another idea, if Border’s Bookstore actually survives far into this
Christmas season, you may be able to buy one of the jokey artificial
trees they had there last year – these things were some kind of
intellectual joke, made with like a few bare wires covered in tinsel;
this choice shows a certain post-modern hauteur which goes very well
with Dinty Moore and Cold Duck.  It’s about $5.99.  But you can make
it yourself, using wire coat-hangers, spray adhesive, and metallic
flock or confetti.  That’s a good thing!

12.     Finally, we have to get control of this holiday again.  Twelve
days my wonderful arse!  Our Jewish neighbors get by with just eight
nights for Hanukkah, and even that is way too much noodle pudding.
Let’s do away with this business of Christmas as a 3-month long retail
opportunity.  The retailers have been unloading container loads of
useless crap from Yiwu, China into their Christmas displays since just
after Labor Day!   With the cheap and nasty Christmas I have outlined
here, we can let them know that that is just not the way we want to be
living anymore.

Have a happy.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Christmas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.