He-brew

There's not a lot for a Jew to get excited about with the approaching Christmas season. I mean, the lights are nice. The windows at Marshall Fields have those creepy moving dolls, which is pretty neat. They'd tell a story if my family didn't inevitably see them backwards every year. It's interesting... you find that once you know Pinocchio becomes a real boy in the end, you don't much care about his humble, splintery origins anymore.

But mostly, the Christmas season is just filled with horrible repetitive music at every store and restaurant in America, idiot shoppers literally trampling and killing eachother for a bargain on a DVD player, and people proudly advertising their multi-cultural awareness by singing the dreidel song incorrectly. "Oh, I love Jewish boys, you're sexy in all the right places. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel is what I like to play. I mean... wait, something about clay? That's like you guys's only Christmas song, right?"

Oh, and before you ask, no, we DON'T still put up a Christmas tree.

So Christmas doesn't really have much going for it in the eyes of a lot of Jews. And don't go saying we have Hanukkah because everyone knows Channukah's lame compared to Christmas, at least in the "according to the rest of the world" sense.

But there's one thing that makes this season my favorite time of year. That's all it takes. One eensy little addition to my daily life that can sustain my happiness through the middle of January at least. I'll tell you what it is. Are you ready? Ok. It's the Christmas menu at Starbucks!

Ok, right, I know. Starbucks is evil bad imperialist corporate blah blah all the same, McDonaldsization of America and their coffee sucks too. I hear ya, and I'm on board 10 months out of the year. But from November something to whenever the menu ends, I don't wanna hear it.

My mom asked me what I want for Hannukkah this year, and the answer is a Starbucks gift card large enough that I can subsist exclusively on peppermint mochas and cranberry bliss bars for as long as I live... with the occasional soy gingerbread latte for variety. (The gingerbread lattes are awesome with soy milk, trust me.)

If for some weird reason you don't like peppermint mochas or the singularly delicious cranberry bliss bars, you can click the X button in your web browser because you don't need to be a part of my life. Then you can click the X button on your existence because it is clearly an empty one.

Last year around this time, somebody I kissed told me I tasted like Christmas. I immediately thought "Oh, yes, I had Starbucks today!" As it turns out I just had gin on my breath, but the point is that the Starbucks menu has become such an intergral part of my holiday experience that it's where my mind first turns for explanations about the taste of my... self. ...at least when I'm drunk. But I think that says something! After he realized it was gin, though, he didn't really want to kiss me anymore. ...which ended up not being a problem..... but I digress.

So anyway, there's no real good conclusion or moral to finish up with. I just wanted to pay tribute to my favorite time of year. I've been in the best moods for the past two mornings, and the Starbucks Christmas menu has just about everything to do with that. Go order something right now. If you can't or don't drink coffee, get a peppermint hot chocolate. If dairy makes you... less than fresh, I'll suggest the aforementioned soy gingerbread latte. There's something for everyone on the Starbucks Christmas menu... except the Jews, I guess. But we're used to it.