Every year, before I make my annual December trek...

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Every year, before I make my annual December trek home to Alabama, I get asked what exactly people do south of the Mason-Dixon for The Holidays. Herewith, an explanation:

Sometime after Thanksgiving but before December 25, the date to which we shall refer as “Christmas”, a piece of tall coniferous vegetation is selected, brutally murdered and its corpse is propped upright in the largest gathering space in the house, the “living room” as it is called (an obvious misnomer, as most time is spent there watching a rectangular screen upon which two groups of men in identical clothing toss a leather ovoid between themselves and occasionally knock each other down. I suppose it’s a sort of living, but really.) The corpse is then adorned with strings of small luminous devices, presumably so that mice and various insects can find their way around the corpse should they decide to go for a little jaunt in the dark.

Also positioned at various places on the corpse are small replicas of repulsive mutant humans with wings, reindeer that fly, and a fat man in ridiculous red and white pajamas who transports himself via a highly improbable airborne sleigh. The flight fantasy is an admittedly powerful one, a common manifestation of subconscious desire for freedom and the sine qua non of lucid dreaming (with the possible exception of sex). But it gets thematically tiresome here, does it not?

There are also inexplicable miniature figures of paramilitary personnel in red and white uniforms, usually with tall black hats, babies that were literally born in a barn and have the hay-lined bassinets to prove it, and a large assortment of unfortunate failed visual arts projects constructed from toothpicks, construction paper, Elmer’s glue and inscribed with unintelligible handwriting, as if produced by children.

Another popular ritual (aside from humiliating dead vegetation) is the hanging of longish footwarmers near the firepit which no one uses because it rarely drops below 50 degrees in Alabama. (Yesterday’s high: 75.) Ideally, the footwarmers have not been used, but in this economy everyone’s on a budget, so really, it’s understandable if they have been. It’s customary to fill the footwarmers (each of which is assigned to a family member) with corn syrup based foodstuffs and small trinkets that are of no use to anyone. The foodstuffs are eventually consumed and the trinkets re-gifted to enemies. Or second cousins and co-workers.

Occasionally, household members shorter than three feet are wrapped like presents with giant bows around their necks and made to sing in ritual “Christmas” cantatas. (Example pictured above.) If there are no cantatas available, the shorter household members are given away as gifts to anyone who will take them. I am fairly certain this is how I came to be adopted, even though there is no discernable lack of cantatas in the region.

There is also a ritual telling of an old story about an alleged man whose alleged birthday was on the 25th in an era where prenatal care was subpar and the lack of obstetrical options meant that the child was relegated to an agricultural facility when his mother went into labor and may have been surrounded by actual livestock at the time. My mother frequently laments that this alleged person has been taken out of his eponymous holiday and spends much time and effort trying to crowbar him (or Him, as she spells it) back in. Personally, I see no evidence of his absence, but to be honest, I’m not that fond of the story.

There is also a Christmas morning tradition wherein family members exchange things they recently purchased on behalf of each other and feign excitement over their trades. This has something to do with the obese man in the pajamas who supposedly lives at the North Pole despite the impossibility of that, barring some island heretofore unknown to geographers. (However, one would have to imagine that real estate prices would be much lower at this hypothetical location and the cost of manufacturing more attractive as well. So it wouldn’t be an illogical choice, all things considered.)

And I would be entirely remiss to neglect the most salient feature of holidays in the South: group feeding. There is only one major method of food preparation in Alabama: frying. There are one or two secondary methods—barbecuing, for example. But they’re less important. As my mother will tell you, anything can be fried. If it doesn’t move, you can drop it into a couple of gallons of boiling oil and it will come out tasty. (My dad would argue that the ‘doesn’t move’ requirement is entirely optional. I have been very careful to keep my dog away from him.)

So fried things are simultaneously consumed by all members of the family and paired with fermented beverages. To be fair, fermented beverages are optional and until a few years ago, my family refused to consume them due to a lamentable misinterpretation of something to do with the man allegedly born in the aforementioned livestock storage unit. But that has since been cleared up, and personally i find that the addition of fermented beverages has made the holidays livelier, happier and more enjoyable for everyone. Christmas spirits, indeed.

I hope that explains everything.