'Tis the day before Christmas, dear reader. In some ways, Christmas Eve is the saddest of all days. The Christmas parties and festive holiday soirées are now all but behind us. Abthernabther Manor is eerily quiet, a hollow ghostly shell of the rambunctious castle of holiday jollity that has been its usual state for the past several weeks.

Now all that remains are crooked wreaths, sadly sagging stockings and faintly blurred reminiscences obscured by the memory-obliterating aftereffect of profuse spiced-rum intake. Also, it would appear that some party guest vomited into my Christmas tree stand.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas Day, I am in the constant company of my fabulous friends and famous acquaintances, people who are quite obviously blessed by the hand of God Himself to be within my peripheral social network. Then when Christmas finally arrives, my friends evaporate from near vicinity and the Abthernabther blood relatives begin to swarm. How I loathe them so.

The familial cavalcade that descends upon Abthernabther Manor each and every 25th of December consists of a quartet of crotchety grandparents, my great-aunt Abby and my half-sister Alva. We have a few Christmas traditions that we partake in. Occasionally, Alva will make a futile attempt to inject a new custom into our standing schedule of events, such as cooking a goose, preparing figgy pudding or shaving a geriatric yak and making fanciful dog sweaters with the furry byproduct. None of these activities is successfully repeated the next year.

The first Christmas ritual involves a contest between both grandfathers to see who can eat the most tinsel. Then, once enough eggnog has been absorbed, the grandmothers will try to upstage their husbands by having yet another lesbian encounter on my bearskin sofa.

The third and final Abthernabther Christmas tradition immediately follows the matriarchs' twisted sexcapade, as my great-aunt Abby engages in her yearly suicide effort. The method of self-execution varies from year to year, but it is always quite dramatic, and I am always left with the responsibility of staving off her attempt. I believe this year she's planning to shoot herself in the stomach with a pirate-ship cannon.

This is where a better writer than I would declare some sort of Christmas epiphany along the lines of, "Despite their faults and foibles, one's family is to be treasured, especially during the most hallowed of all Christian holidays."

I will make no such foolish claims. But I wish the best to you and yours. Good tidings to you and all of your kin. Except for that one uncle who dons the Santa suit as an excuse to get a little grabby with your teenage cousins. Bad tidings to him.

Alibaster K. Abthernabther welcomes your comments, but only if those comments praise his fine taste in floral ascots. E-mail him at alibaster.k.abthernabther @gmail.com.

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