THE SOUND OF CHRISTMAS MUSIC FINALLY RECEDING FROM PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS!
Happy National Pumpkin Pie Day! What a delicious way to celebrate a random day at the end of December! Good thing there's nothing else happening of note today that might steal Big Pumpkin's dessert-y thunder...
Oh wait — right. December 25th. Merry Christmas!
If you're anything like my family, your Christmas morning unfolds thusly:
• 6:00AM - All children under the age of 12 wake up and begin foaming at the mouth and gnashing teeth, champing at the bit to tear into gifts. Doesn't matter for whom, they just want to rip brightly-colored paper to shreds.
• 6:01AM - These children are told in no uncertain terms that they must wait until 7:00AM at the earliest to rouse their older brother (me) from his slumber, lest he transmogrify into The Christmas Ogre and ruin everyone's day with sullen, sarcastic insults.
• 7:00AM - Everyone gathers around the dining room table to read Advent devotionals, sing Christmas hymns — not carols, hymns, preferably with multiple stanzas to really ratchet up the impotent frustrated rage of the sub-12 set — sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus, eat the attendant birthday cake baked specially for Him, and jockey for position near the papered-over entrance to the living room until given permission to enter and obliterate a small forest worth of paper.
• 7:20ish AM - Permission is granted
• 8:30ish AM - Operation: Destroy All Wrapping Paper is complete
Totally normal, right? Every family does this, right? RIGHT?!
Peace on Earth and bad will to your fierce competition in the unwrapping Olympics!
GIF via Saturday Night Live / NBC
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The above description of events may seem hyperbolic, but I assure you it is not. That was quite literally every Christmas morning in the Snow household from ≈ 1992 - 2004, and I assume it continues to this day because my brothers will never not be annoying AF on Christmas morning, even in their 30s.
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If you are not a Christmas celebrant, I hope you are still planning to enjoy a day of tranquil reflection and relaxation today.
If you are associating with said celebrants today but need a last-minute gift, don't forget that Boredwalk sells electronic gift cards that are instantaneously delivered to your email inbox after purchase. It's like you are Santa Clause and the internet is your own personal chimney!
And if you are the recipient of said gift card OR just some cold hard digital cash that your lazy siblings just Venmo'ed you in lieu of something more thoughtful, be sure to use code SAVE15 at checkout for 15% off orders of $95 or more, and don't forget that U.S. shipping is FREE for orders of $75 or more!
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Alright! Let's kick off this holiday with a few famous December 25th birthdays and historical facts:
• In 1758 Johann Georg Palitzsch sighted Halley's Comet, confirming its namesake Edmund Halley's prediction of its passage and becoming the first passage of a comet that was predicted ahead of time
• In 1968 the Apollo 8 mission performed the first successful Trans-Earth injection (TEI) maneuver, which sent the crew & spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit
• In 2021 the James Webb Space Telescope was launched
• Birthday pumpkin pie all around for: Nurse, humanitarian, and founder of the American Red Cross Clara Barton (1821), actor Humphrey Bogart of Casablanca fame (1899), jazz singer-songwriter & bandleader Cab Calloway (1907), screenwriter, producer, and creator of The Twilight Zone Rod Serling (1924), English singer-songwriter & bassist Noel Redding of The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1945), singer-songwriter, guitarist, and margarita enthusiast Jimmy Buffett (1946), actress Sissy Spacek of Carrie fame (1949), Guyanese-American actress CCH Pounder of The X-Files, ER, and The Shield fame (1952), Scottish singer-songwriter & pianist Annie Lennox of Eurythmics fame (1954), recently departed English-Irish singer-songwriter Shane MacGowan of Pogues fame (1957), English songwriter, producer, and journalist Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne (1964), Danish model & actress Helena Christensen of "rolling around on the beach with Chris Isaak" fame (1968), French musician & producer Nicolas Godin of pop duo Air (1969), English singer-songwriter Dido of "Here With Me" and "Thank You" fame (1971), Irish musician & songwriter Noel Hogan of 90s alt-rock darlings The Cranberries (1971), and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (1971)
• Pour out some egg nog for: English actor & director Charlie Chaplin (d. 1977), singer, actor, and all-around entertainer Dean Martin (d. 1995), singer-songwriter & Godfather of Soul James Brown (d. 2006), singer & actress Eartha Kitt (d. 2008), singer-songwriter & guitarist Vic Chesnutt (d. 2009), and British singer-songwriter & pop superstar George Michael of "Last Christmas" fame with Wham! (d. 2016)
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OK, no new customer Q&A this week, but if you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and no more Christmas music in stores after today,
Matt
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