You could do the holidays the frost-touched, gilt-edged, Winter Wonderland way. Or you could go totally tacky, and we're not talking 30-foot-tall pulsating plastic Santas. No, we mean something, or 50 somethings, much much worse.
1.Cut out the holiday tips to the cleaning people, the doorman, the nanny. What are they doing to do in this economy, quit??
2.Stage a no-kids-allowed holiday party. Except for your own kids, of course.
3.Put a plow on the front of your black Range Rover.
4.Wear ski tights when you're not actually skiing.
5.Throw out all holiday cards except the one from the Obamas, which you display on your mantle.
6.At the office party, grind with that cute intern.
7.Work the room at your kid's school's Holiday Sing.
8.Send everyone on your list a copy of your own autographed book.
9.Create a Christmas card that features a picture of your entire family wearing matching red pajamas.
10.Wait until the ninth day of Hanukah to break up.
11.Hang a plastic wreath, but act insulted if anyone asks you whether it's real.
12.Use mistletoe as excuse to slip your brother-in-law some tongue.
13.Use drunkenness as excuse to let it slip in front of kids that there's no Santa.
14.Use frozen latkes, but hide the box.
15.Post Google ads on your family holiday blog.
16.Tie antlers on your dog's head.
17.Throw a huge holiday party to which you invite everyone, except the neighbors.
18.Name your twins Merry and Noel.
19.Bake nude, anatomically correct gingerbread men.
20.Have your Christmas tree professionally decorated.
21.Write and perform your own holiday rap.
22.Donate hideous Christmas tree sweater your mother-in-law spent nine months knitting to Goodwill.
23.Tell everyone on your holiday list that you're donating money to Doctors Without Borders in their name. Then don't.
24.Organize office Secret Santa, then claim you were too busy to buy your contribution.
25.Smoke weed in effort to bond with stoner son home for the holidays.
26.Carry around pennies to create maximum jangle in Salvation Army bucket.
27.Let octogenarian parents visiting from Wisconsin fend for themselves at Radio City Holiday Show, while you take in Speed-the-Plow.
28.Make big batch of chocolate chip meringues. Eat them all yourself.
29.Mail out foil-edged, hand-embossed Christmas letters detailing how thankful you are to be making lots of money in this awful recession, praise the Lord.
30.Force your 12 year-old to wear a smocked velvet dress and patent mary janes.
31.Wear smocked velvet and patent mary janes yourself.
32.Buy your wife a pair of CZ earrings and put them in a Tiffany box.
33.Hire a dwarf to dress as an elf at your Christmas party.
34.Recycle the angel picture your nephew draws you in kindergarten.
35.Claim the Christmas tree china you bought at Target was handed down from your great-grandmother.
36.Buy your ten year-old an iPhone.
37.Take in a Christmas Eve gospel service, purely for the theatre.
38.Tell little Julian that instead of milk and cookies, Santa would prefer you leave him a big glass of scotch.
39.Pass out halfway through putting together Julian's commando jeep, the one you bought in an attempt to get him to stop playing with his sister's dress-up clothes.
40.Make a big show of going out to get everyone fresh bagels and donuts on Christmas morning, then use the time to call your lover.
41.Volunteer to bring dessert to Christmas dinner sister spends two weeks cooking. Show up with Entenmann's cake.
42.Give your niece an heirloom doll, then yell at her if she tries to play with it.
43.Rather than losing your temper at family celebration, sit there silently with tears running down your cheeks.
44.Gripe about getting too many presents.
45.Put your shrink on speaker phone during the family Christmas dinner squabble.
46.Tell Mom and Dad you're too busy and/or broke to visit over the holidays. Then sneak off to Anguilla.
47.Schedule holiday visit with relatives for December 28, so you can buy gifts at post-Christmas sales.
48.Ask everyone to bring a bottle of great champagne to your New Year's party. House contribution: Frexinet.
49.Throw out your live tree.
50.Make assistant hold down the fort over the holidays, then return to work on January 5 complaining about how exhausted you are.