"Music and cookies and liquor and trees, that's what Christmas is for"

I know that three days is SO LATE in the internet game, but sorry internet, I have a life and right now it is CRAZY and it's been all I can do to maintain my sanity, much less write blog posts. But I took notes so that I could write something once things died down a little. SO.........

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas review starts now! Well, a few paragraphs from now.

Let me begin by explaining a little about my family and our Christmas celebrations and my relationship to Christmas pop culture. My dad does not like Christmas, a fact that made known to me once he deemed me old enough, which was around my 10th birthday. My sister and mom were a little indifferent to the whole thing, and then there was me. I LOVE Christmas - well, I love MY version of Christmas. I love picking out the perfect gifts and hanging stockings and cooking with my family and singing carols and unwrapping presents and the rainy weather and lights and the smell of the tree and pretty much anything Christmas that doesn't have to do with Jesus. My sister celebrates Chanukah and my grandfather celebrates the solstice; this year, due to a fortuitous typo, we've decided to refer to our December 25th holiday celebration as Xams, so as to remove it as far from Christ as possible. Because my family are atheists and agnostics and one converted Jew, we tend to avoid stuff about angels and pageants and miracles and the weirdness of worshiping a baby, and focus on the good stuff: eating and giving. Carols were always one of my favorites because I love to sing, but they drove my dad crazy and I've had to find good, non-annoying versions of my favorite Christmas songs to fill up my awesome winter playlist.

But this meant that I didn't watch a lot of Christmas movies/specials when I was a kid, partly by choice and partly because my dad would not give the TV up for that stuff. Rudolph and The Nightmare Before Christmas creeped me out, Charlie Brown didn't really captivate me, Miracle On 34th St. was boring, and I still, to this day, have never seen It's A Wonderful Life. Oh, sure, I watched The Grinch and Home Alone, but the holiday movie I probably saw the most was the animated version of The Snowman (quiet and nondenominational and thus inoffensive to my dad). As I got a little older, I started watching Friends and their holiday episodes became some of my favorites - and some of the best, with moments I can still instantly recall. Friends handled the holidays awesomely by either making a classic bottle episode, or by putting the Friends into stressful, emotional, and/or drunk situations. Always pitch-perfect. As I got even older, I started making my own traditions and found my trio of current all-time favorite holiday movies: Die Hard. Lord Of The Rings. Elf.

Let's break it down a little. Die Hard is awesome, possibly the best action movie of all time. It takes place on Christmas Eve, Alan Rickman plays a German terrorist named Hans Gruber, there is a character named Argyle, and John McClane kicks an insane amount of ass all out of love for his estranged wife. There are sweet explosions and a jackass 80's cokehead. Nothing says Xams like a half-naked, dirty, sweaty Bruce Willis with cut-up feet shooting Germans in the kneecaps. The only way the movie could be better is if Carl Winslow was in it...oh, wait, HE TOTALLY IS.

The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, for those of you who are old enough to remember, were released in December for three consecutive years and thus became a Christmas tradition for me in their own right. I own all of the extended editions, and seriously, nothing is more comforting in the dark days of winter then curling up with my box set, meandering through special features, watching the entire trilogy, or just skipping about for the parts with Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd being adorable. My friend Katherine and I nerd out on the LotR dvd extras together, yet another holiday tradition I'm going to miss this year.

Elf sums up all of the marvelously sappy and joyous stuff that I love about Christmas without devolving into Jesus territory at all. The main message of the story is that "the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear", which basically just means that if you're

joyful, other people will be too - something I try to practice. Also it's funny, and the music is great, and kids love it even if they don't get all the jokes, and adults get to get all the jokes AND feel like a kid again. Elf wins all around.

There was this one amazing night, I had just turned seven and my front tooth was loose. My best friend and I were in my room singing, "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth..." and my dad heard us and swept into the room and told us that there was a movie playing called All I Want For Christmas and did we want to go? And we DID, and it was almost like a miracle because my dad didn't like Christmas and rarely took us to movies and never on the spur of the moment like that and I love him for that night of joyous spontaneity.

When I said I was going to explain a little, I meant a lot. But what you can gather from all this is that the Community stop-motion animation Christmas episode had some special meaning for me, mostly apart from the pop culture references ("Cut the non-thematic chatter"). This is the first Christmas since I've really been living as an adult in a city, and I'm feeling a little isolated from my close friends and family. "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" shows us that you can make new traditions and build new families wherever you go - "The meaning of Christmas is the idea that Christmas has meaning" - hopefully my life won't make it a tradition to collapse every December, but really things can only get better from here.

Aside from the animation, which was superb (I loved Abed explaining that they're not made of clay, which I knew from the making of Frog And Toad Together, thank you very much Long Ago And Far Away) I loved the songs. From Sad Quick Christmas Song ("Tragic denouement; sad quick Christmas song") to the Wonka-style musical comeuppances ("Swaddled in her diaper, high up on her throne, the queen of Christmas babies thought that Christmas was her own") to the group number at the end ("Video games for two straight weeks, that's what Christmas is for"), I don't think there was a wrong note in the bunch. Tragically, the songs haven't been released onto iTunes or anything, so I'll have to wait and see if they can make it onto my ultimate Christmas playlist.

I really loved the continued exploration of Christmas not just being for Christians; that even Jews and Muslims and atheists and Jehovah's Witnesses can have a relationship with the holiday, whatever way they celebrate it. Community's Christmas episode last year, "Comparative Religion", cemented for me the awesomeness of the show's writers and their ability to handle tricky and possibly controversial material. "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" is the natural next step for the characters to take after last year's unification; that it happened to be stop-motion animated was an excellent way to continue Community's tradition of brilliant pop culture homages in addition to providing some insight into the ways that Abed views and deals with the world.

Notes & Quotes:

"Why would I want to be at a school that hates Christmas?"

Teddy Pierce!!! Totes the best. He squeaks! I want one for my very own, Santa.

"Bleep bloop for me, too"

"Some of us have women to sleep with!"

"Who taught you therapy - Michael Jackson's Dad?"

If you're listening, Santa, I'd also like a remote-controlled Christmas Pterodactyl.

"What's that?"

"It's the first season of Lost on dvd."

"That's the meaning of Christmas?"

"No, it's a metaphor. It represents lack of payoff."

"Troy and Abed in stop-motion!"

***

Out of all the other Christmas episodes I watched this week, the other one that really stuck with me was The Office. Oh sure, Glee was ok, but the songs were a little meh and I have to admit that the show doesn't fill me with the same sort of rapt emotion that it did last year. I remember having chills when they sang "Somebody To Love" and being stunned when they did "Jump" on the mattresses. Glee just doesn't make me feel like that anymore, and I'm bummed about it. ANYway, The Office was given 45 minutes to make a classic Office Christmas episode, complete with Michael doing the wrong thing but trying to make up for it, more Holly Flax, and a vicious Dwight after the softer side we were shown last week. There were lots of good odds and ends (nice to see that Phyllis' knitting is finally being appreciated), but the Darryl storyline was particularly sweet, especially because I can remember going to my dad's work as a kid and how in awe I would have been if I could have gotten anything I wanted from the incredible row of vending machines - such an original way to show a kid's perspective in a show that usually lacks such a thing (unless the kid is Michael). I watched the show twice looking for quotes, but my favorite was this classic Dwight closer:

"In the end, the greatest snowball isn't a snowball at all - it's fear. Merry Christmas!"

I think that's a lesson we can all take with us.

Thanks for sticking around through my Massive Xams Post; I'm moving this week so who knows when I'll have time to write but expect more stuff soon on In Treatment, Community, and shows from the past that you have sadly forgotten. And, quite possibly, an ode to Motherboy.

PS: I saw Donald Glover (Troy from Community) at the first show of his I AM DONALD tour last night - and it was fucking sweet. Tickets were cheap, and if you like awesome stand-up and face-melting band-backed hip hop, this is the show for you. Check out his website, IAMDONALD.com, for tour dates and tickets. Support young talented commedians! That's what we here at Girl Glows Green are all about. Well, that, and music and cookies and liquor and trees.

Merry Xams!

Images via Daemons TV, TV Tropes, What Would Toto Watch, Alive Not Dead, NY Mag