10 Things We’re Thankful for This Holiday Season

Image via Complex Original

This is your annual reminder to be on the look out for free stuff throughout the month of December. If you work for someone with any kind of power, don’t miss work this time of year. If your boss has pull in the business world, she will get all sorts of gifts. Whether she operates a dry cleaners or runs a movie studio, everyone who does business with her will send a gift basket or some other token in honor of their continued financial relationship. These gifts are usually impersonal and unwanted, which means you might be able to keep them for yourself. If you play your cards right, you could end up with a membership to a cheese of the month club or a fat Cheesecake Factory gift card. Stay woke fam, there are gift baskets at stake. In the age of American Express gift cards, a piece of plastic can easily be turned into dope kicks or Guitar Hero Live.

Many things about being an adult are pretty terrible. Christmas parties are not one of them. As a kid, Christmas parties are an occasion to watch your parents get lit and be forced into the basement to watch claymation movies with much younger kids who cry through all the good parts. As an adult, Christmas parties are lit. There are two breeds of Christmas party, and both of them are amazing. The first is the “we’re all leaving town for a week, so let’s rage” party. This happens among your peers and takes place just before everyone takes a red eye back to whatever town birthed them. This party is notable for the number of ironic Christmas sweaters and the amount of people crammed into a small apartment.

The other type of holiday party is the “boss throws a bone to the peasants” party. These are the best. They involve a big wig at work putting on a decadent party with open bar and unlimited platters of Christmas cookies. They are either held at a bar you can’t afford to drink at or a house you normally would get arrested for coming near. If you can get into a party like this, move mountains to secure that invite. It doesn’t matter if you only kind of know a guy who works in the mailroom. If a company has more than 12 people working for it, there is no way everyone knows everyone else. Get there early, raid the hors d'oeuvres plate, and see if you can’t smuggle out a bottle of wine. No one will remember anything, and if they do, it will never be spoken of at work.

One of the most amazing things about the holiday season is when a gift gets so hot that people literally fist fight over it, only to have that item relegated to the dustbin of history by February. There’s nothing quite like sitting back and watching the madness of Black Friday and Christmas Eve, so long as you aren’t a part of the madness yourself. Early trends indicate that this year’s Tickle Me Elmo will be the hoverboard (which are technically self-balancing scooters and not hoverboards), but we still have a few weeks to see for sure what item drives parents to the brink of insanity. There is something lovely about finding out which toy will cause children to weep if they don’t get it, and then end up lining the shelves at Goodwill this time next year. 

Many families pack the holiday season with annoying traditions. Some families dress up for church on Christmas Eve. Others get up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning. Some families force their kids to trudge out to the tree farm to freeze their asses off as they wait for dad to pick out that perfect spruce. Everyone has holiday obligations that they can’t wait to be free of, and that’s why the holiday season brings with it some of the best nights out of the year. No matter what your family does for the holidays, everyone needs one night to escape them.

Whether you catch up with high school classmates at the local sports bar on Christmas Eve, or you have a little Friendsmas celebration at the dive bar before everyone heads off to their ancestral homeland, there is nothing quite like blowing off steam around the holidays with people who can feel your pain. 

If you are headed back to your parents’ house for the holidays, you have a chance at that most elusive run-in: meeting up with your high school crush. Going back home can be like opening a portal to the past. Everyone is a little older and a little wiser, and all of the weird social strata of high school are long forgotten, but for a few days it’s like you’re 16 again (minus the acne and crushing insecurity). You have a chance with your high school crush whether she was the homecoming queen or the gothy art girl, provided you take the initiative to reconnect in the precious few days that you’re home for the holidays.

If the girl of your childhood dreams has gone off and gotten married, don’t worry, there’s still plenty you can do. You can take this opportunity to get a beer with your favorite high school teacher, laugh at the bully who has gotten fat and drunk, or grab breakfast with that friend you’ve fallen out of touch with. No matter what you decide, it beats sitting at your parents’ house listening to them complain about how the neighbors leave out their trash cans too long.

Ridiculous Christmas specials are one of America’s great traditions. Though these shows are incredibly boring vestiges of a bygone era, for some reason, networks insist on continuing to produce them. There’s nothing quite as odd as turning on the television to see Al Roker, the cast of The Big Bang Theory, and Nelly on the same program, spreading network-approved holiday cheer. If celebrities being shoved together on a soundstage doesn’t get you in the spirit, you can always check in with the Hallmark Channel to see TV movies starring has-been movie stars with titles like A Christmas Detour and Moonlight and Mistletoe. If you still have even more of a hankering for #ChristmasContent, you can check in with ABC Family where they air every Christmas movie ever during the holiday season. 

You might just end up scrambling through your local mall on December 24 trying to find that last-minute gift. If you do, you’ll know that it's nobody’s fault but your own. In 2015, there is actually no reason to walk into a physical store, unless you get off on the thrill of the hunt. All of those people clawing over each other on Black Friday are there for a marginal discount and to sate their capitalist bloodlust. Be thankful this holiday season that you can choose to do all of your purchasing from the comfort of your own computer chair. Unlike your ancestors before you, you can wage the war on Christmas from home.

When your position is defined as “entry level,” you generally have to go into work right up until a day or two before Christmas. The good news is that between Thanksgiving and Christmas, nothing gets done at work anyway. The powerful people go on vacation as soon as possible. The less powerful (but still more powerful than you) co-workers are more concerned with purchasing gifts and finalizing travel plans than finishing that presentation that is going to get pushed until after the holidays anyway. Everyone else at work gets distracted planning holiday parties and sending brown-nosing gifts to their corporate betters. If you’re the low man on the totem pole, you have to come to work, but the good news is there isn’t much work getting done.

As cheesy as it may sound, there are some easy, romantic options for couples during the holidays (even if you’re on a budget). If you live in a big city, you can head to the part of town that gets most decked out for the season. Whether it’s Fifth Avenue in New York or The Grove in Los Angeles, every city offers a spot where it pays to just walk around and take in the holiday cheer. If you live in the burbs, you can always pull the “Baby, why don’t we take drive and look at all the Christmas lights in the neighborhood?” In either scenario, you’re only paying for hot chocolate and gas.

Once you’ve taken in the sites and endured an hour of bone-chilling cold, it will be time to head back home feeling like you’ve accomplished something other than being stressed out by Christmas shopping. You can kick back, relax, and play some Guitar Hero Live knowing that you’ve taken in a sizable helping of holiday cheer. 

The hectic hustle of the holiday season can take it out of anybody. Whether you’re rushing to the airport to get that last flight back to Des Moines to see your parents, or you’re scanning stores for that item you slept on so long that Amazon is backordered until January 24, the Yuletide season brings with it a lot of BS. Once you can finally hunker down, whether it be in your parents’ basement, or in your apartment after your roommates have all left town, it is time to chill.

Treat yourself to the things you love that you never have time for. Whether that is finally attempting to conquer “Ghost Walking” or “Hangar18” in Guitar Hero Live or losing an entire day to Netflix, once you get where you’re going for the holidays, you can finally kick back, relax, and give yourself a little holiday cheer.