Well, Christmas is almost upon us, and I apologize for the lack of Christmas-themed blogs…and blogs themselves in general. Life, tiredness, lack of chutzpah, etc.
If you weren't around last year, here are the Christmas-Related Blogs I posted:
-Elements for Rankin-Bass Specials
-Favorite Christmas Specials
-Other Christmas Stuff
-My Gifts from Christmas '06
And Gifts I wanted For Christmas, But Never Got…just scroll down.
But tonight, I wanted to share with you all the various traditions that I observe in my life around Christmas time!
-Christmas Specials
Yes, from Charlie Brown, to Garfield, to The Grinch, to "How _____ Saved Christmas" and the 5,000 interpretations of A Christmas Carol, Muppet or Non-Muppet involvement alike. But most of all, I'm into the Rankin-Bass Specials. All of them…even the crappy ones no one's ever heard of. I believe I've proven this point before in the previous blogs that I linked above. ABC Family usually shows a Marathon of them on Christmas Eve that I always watch, and this year didn't disappoint…almost.
You see, they didn't just keep the specials just for Christmas Eve, ABC Family ran them constantly throughout December! But on Xmas Eve itself…it just ran 6 Specials from 11-6pm…only 2 of them worth watching (Year Without A Santa Claus & Santa Claus is Comin' To Town were the ones that closed out the "marathon") to make way for double Showings of "The Polar Express"…which they ran about 500 times already this month. 
Its not even that good! And badly animated to boot! 
-HESS Trucks
Yes, my one constant Xmas gift is the annual HESS Truck provided by my Grandmother. This year, however, it seems that HESS is running out of ideas. Unlike previousy ears of sticking motorcycles and/or Helicopters on a Flatbed, HESS made a completely new Monster Truck...With Motorcycles.
I have every Truck since 1988 or so…and most of them are still in their boxes. I can't wait til they become collector's Items…I mean more expensive ones. 
-NORAD Santa Tracker
I'm one of those Agnostic Santa Believers, meaning there is a possibility that Santa may or may not exist. If there is a contest for Best Government Organization, I'd nominate NORAD for the honor.
Besides keeping our defenses safe in the air and for and against hackers, Every December 24th, the NORAD website keeps a "Santa Tracker" which posts videos of Santa sightings all over Earth. The last 2 years, however, they've mostly kept the same videos, but putting different audio of different NORAD workers repeating the same damn message. But this year is the first time all of the vids are on Youtube!
But I don't give a damn. It's magical! And…I can't believe NORAD doesn't have a more sophisticated Computer Animation program…
While on the subject of Santa…
-Santa on the Fire Truck
This cheesy tradition dates back to my childhood. Every year around the first or second Saturday of December, the local Fire Department patrols around town with a Santa on the truck waving to all the little girls and boys in their houses. I realized that each Fire Department on Long Island does this and not just mine, and they do it at different days and times (he visited Bayport last Tuesday at around 9 at night). The truck usually blares Christmas music and has his "helpers" knock on doors of houses with open curtains to give out candy canes to the people forced to witness this event. This year was funny, as while the Santa Truck came, it blared a badly-sounding rendition of "Winter Wonderland" as it sped away into the daylight. The Santa, as well as some fire fighters, were ducking their heads under the power lines in order to save Christmas from being ruined…again.
This remind me of a joke of a comedian friend of mine, my Frat Brother Brian. He had this set that ask the question: "What if the Santa Truck had to respond to a call?" You would bet that the little kids would be traumatized, and that the coal that would be given for their naughtiness of committing Arson would do nothing to extinguish the fire.
And finally, we come to my last tradition:
-Advent Calendars
Throughout the last few years, I actually have 2 different Advent Calendars that I follow.
The first one is an Advent Calendar Adventure that is run by Matt of X-Entertainment.com fame. It started in 2002 of him taking pictures of the various gifts that come out of the Playmobil Advent Calendar (and in recent years, the LEGO one too) to comment on how awful the gifts were. In the years that followed, these advent calendars took on a life of their own, and these random riffing pics became epic adventures, involving not just the Playmobil and LEGO characters, but Star Wars LEGO Characters, a female Playmobil Chracter named after obscure Brat Pack member Mare Winningham, 2 Utroms (Krang-like creatures from the new Ninja Turtles cartoon) that have inhabited the bodies of the 2004 Playmobil Santa & Mrs. Claus figures, an annoying talking Snowman, a man wearing a Tiger costume, and even James Lipton! This year's calendar has been for the most part, Epic. It involved 2 Playmobil Bunnies and the Burnt 2006 Playmobil Santa attempting to kill the Heroic characters by summoning their demon god Leviathan…only to have it backfire on them and to reveal a guy in a Giant Bunny Costume taking the Head Villain to Hell, which all played with an ongoing month-long conspiracy of a site that was hidden in the December 23rd box of the calendar.You have to really read every Advent Calendar Entry to every Advent Calendar to really get what's going on. If you manage to do so…it's pretty awesome.
The other advent calendar kind of works like an actual one. There's this stuffed Santa with 24 different slots on his belly, and what my mom does is fill all 24 slots with Scratch-off Lotto Tickets (or in this year's case, 25 tickets). And on Christmas Day, I scratch off all of them, hoping to make some quick cash. There have been years where I didn't win anything, but I've been lucky for the past few years, averaging $15-20! 
And that's all for me tonight, Merry Christmas Everyone!