You know what ruined Christmas? It happened when people stopped giving you toys for Christmas and instead decided to shower you with practical stuff.

I actually remember the days when I'd wake up early and drag my grouchy parents out of bed at seven in the morning to open my presents. Those were the good days, because there was something to look forward to inside those gift wrapped boxes. Normal kids would get like a Playstation or, uh, a pony or something you could take out of the box right away and play with. A new toy and new toy experiences, fun fun fun. I'd even get something like a 500-piece set of Legos, which, nerd that I was, I actually liked. I was a very imaginative only child.

But these days, I get things like — on a good Christmas — a telescope or an aquarium. And the worst Christmas in recent memory was highlighted by an ink-jet printer. Thank you, Santa! Now I can print at 600 dpi resolution. Just what I always wanted. That's the thing, what'm I gonna do with a printer at six in the morning. Might as well not even bother to unwrap the damn thing until I actually have a paper due.

Hard as it is to imagine, it could be even worse. Mom is in the habit of wrapping up random things and giving them to me as "presents." It's bad enough that I get clothes, but sometimes Mom will wrap up a box of Cheez-Its and pretend that it's a Christmas gift. She's even been known to wrap up things that I already own and use on a regular basis. Other years, Mom and Dad will put a rain check in a box and wrap that up, so I won't get my Christmas gift until the following March. It's like... you know the disappointment you feel when you go to the E.T. ride at Universal Studios Florida and you wait on line out in the sun for two hours, and you get to the building and there's another line inside... and then there's a short annoying movie that you don't even get to sit down for, followed by another hour long line, and then you get on the stupid bike-tram people-mover thing and the ride is like three minutes long and it jerks you around a lot and totally sucks ass?

That's what my Christmases are like. No reason to get up early for that crap.