Merry Christmas

 

Thanksgiving is over. 

Meaning we are officially into the Happy Birthday Jesus Season. So let's all buy crap we already have, run up outrageous credit card bills and stave off retirement until the Uber Wealthy reluctantly decide to trickle down a little money to the indentured servants -- that's you and me. 

Well, more you than me as I have cut the umbilical chord to the working world and am now enjoying the overripe fruit of my labor, eating pureed foods and shopping for a tasteful Dirt Nap suit.

It's also time for my yearly Caganer post. Now there's something you don't already have, a caganer. 

Perhaps my 8 loyal R17 readers know what I'm talking about. I've only been been singing the praises of the caganer for a dozen years or so. And yet it still hasn't entered today's lexicon. This, I view, as a complete personal failure. Particularly in light of my daughter's word success.

With one Tik Tok video, Abby and her friends, popularized the word Cheugy, which is now bandied about with such regularity it shows up on TV shows, movies and every coffee house within a 3000 mile radius of Brooklyn. 

You can read about its etymology here.

I suppose I could make a video about the caganer but then I'd have sign up for Tik Tok and let my new Chinese overlords have access to my now dwindling financial portfolio.

Also, I'm terrible at making videos and never know whether to use portrait or landscape mode. And more often than not my videos and photos are nothing more than fleshy snapshots of my big fat thumb. So, 'yeah, no.' Another phrase that has successfully entered the lexicon.

In short, the caganer is a little shitting gnome. He, or she, regularly shows up in Nativity scenes staged in Catalonia. As well as nearby southern France. Mind you, he's not actually in the manger with Jesus, Joseph and Mary and the three wise men and the other assorted Jews who weren't playing pinochle that night. The caganer stands just outside, so as not to interrupt the birth of our lord and savior. 

Behold...

You don't have to be a brain surgeon or even a fry cook to see why, for me, the caganer is a source of great fascination. In fact, I have a small collection of caganers that now adorn, in that most natural location, the window sill in my guest bathroom...

You can find out more about the caganer by popping the word in the R17 search engine (located in the upper left hand corner) or clicking this handy dandy link, which proves I'm not making this shit up.

In fact, if you're so inclined you can purchase your own celebrity caganer here.

You can even get a Donald Trump Caganer, though the designers mistakenly portrayed the excrement emerging from the wrong orifice.

Merry Christmas.