The Story of the Garrett Christmas

The Garrett family Christmas celebration is a bizarre spectacle that few outsiders have seen. Here is a little background on the craziness and some highlights from this year - which ended up at my house last minute...

For over 10 years, my family has celebrated Garrett Christmas together the Saturday after Dec 25th. The night includes a feast of Mexican food, the usual Garrett humor, and the infamous "Garrett Gag Gift" exchange which has included gifts of "electric toilet paper", a bound book titled "The Garrett Lexicon", and a mason jar of ashes labled "Smokey the Bar"...

The Genesis
It all started when I was a sophomore in college and my mom picked up a job as a cook at the county jail. She tried to work all of the holidays for the extra holiday pay, including picking up shifts for people who wanted to spend time with their family. Until then, my brothers had been alternating Holidays with their in-laws. It became a bit of a scheduling nightmare at times and often the whole family wouldn't be together. With my mom consistently working the holidays, we just started getting together the weekend after and usually everyone could get be there. It made most everyone happy, but in general was more of a logistical solution to ensure that the family actually saw each other on the Holidays. 

Goodbye "Proper" Christmas - Hello Misfit Toy Christmas

For the first few years during college, I went home for Christmas eve to my parents'. I'd just finished a gauntlet of finals at school and was looking forward to a "proper" Christmas. In reality, I'd hangout with my dad (typically in his underwear) watching a marathon of movies until my mom got home from work around 7pm. She'd  warm up some dinner she had put together the night before after a long day of cooking at the jail. We'd eat. We'd maybe open a couple gifts. My mom would spend the rest of the night cleaning instead of hanging out. My dad and I would watch another movie, drink a few beers, and the night would end. The next day I'd head back to Minneapolis. One of the "highlights" was when we actually got my mom to sit down and watch of movie. It was the unrated cut of "40 Year old Virgin" and my mom immediately started snoring 5 minutes into it.

Maybe it was because I was a jaded college kid, but Christmas no longer had the same magic it used to - especially without all the brothers there.

After a few years of that routine, I started staying in Minneapolis for Christmas. Some friends and I would get together and hangout and drink a lot. Sometimes we made a feast. Sometimes we'd go to a bar after and see some DJs with friends who just wrapped up with their family Christmas. We dubbed the whole affair "Misfit Toy Christmas". For a time, for me, it replaced the "proper" Christmas ideal - a bunch of "Misfits" whose family was estranged, gone, or just too far away to visit. 
 

The Evolution of the Gag Gift Exchange

After a few years the "weekend after" Garrett get-together with the brothers had been firmly established on the calendar. At first it was a quicky afternoon get together hosted at one of the brothers' homes near Minneapolis. We'd have dinner, typically ham or a roast. We'd ask various forms of "How's work going?" or "What grade are you in again?" and then open some gifts. This was followed by a half hour of hugging and the "long Minnesota good bye". That was it ... in the beginning.

My younger brother Matt and my older brother Ryan's kids were the only children to really buy anything for. It was fun to watch them get excited tearing up gift wrap and getting toys and such. Gifts for the adults were a little less exciting early on. There were sometimes some good gifts, but usually it was stuff purchased out of obligation - bath soap sets, socks, ties, etc. I think a lot of it was purchased at "Day After Christmas" sales. A lot of money was spent on stuff that no one really wanted. What?!?? A scented candle wasn't on your wish list?

One year someone protested, and we decided to do a gift card exchange for the adults. The idea was that you would buy a gift card, wrap it up, and then we'd draw a name and we'd exchange our gift card for their gift card. It is as exciting as it sounds. It started to backfire as my brothers and their wives would buy cards for places that didn't exist near my parents' and vice versa. My sister in law might end up with a $50 gift card for the Norske Nooke and my dad might end up with a gift card for Bed Bath and Beyond. You'd have to go out of your way to spend them. I'm guessing a lot didn't get used. Also, my dad usually threw in a pair of work gloves and a jug of windshield "woosh". It became a bit of a joke.

Enter the Gag Gift Exchange

My brother Ryan is the family "screw off". While he was still in high school, occasionally he'd wrap up some weird looking jar of something my mom had canned. One time, he took a particularly large and knobby potato and stuck "Mr Potato Head" pieces into it. It usually pissed off my mom, but made everyone laugh.

To spice up the gift card exchange period of the Garrett family Christmas, Ryan (now an adult with children), started wrapping up other things. Sometimes, it was a dirty diaper. Another time, it was the gloves and windshield "woosh" my dad had given the year before.

Finally, sick of the gift card exchange, we made a new rule: gag gifts only. To spice it up even further, Ryan's son Alex started making a game of it. One year it was "Pictionary". Another year it was "Wheel of Crap". I failed to previously mention that when my oldest brother got married, his wife Kristen quickly noticed that the family had 4 main additives to describe things: cool, lame, junk, and crap. These became the categories of Alex's games. In the Jeopardy year, we'd laugh every time someone yelled "CRAP for $400 Alex". Being a split Packers/Vikings family, either team was fair game for either the "cool" or "crap" category. My family also has a lot of quirks, and these became answers to games. "Egg Carton Armor" or "Furniture Spray painted black" were references to my younger brother's craftiness and my older brother's craftiness respectively. It was all in good fun. By the end of the game, all the Garrett's were laughing and any guests that were not as familiar with our family were left confused and/or wishing they were a Garrett.

At the end of the game, a member of the team with the most points got to pick the first gag gift followed by a member of the other team. We'd switch off until all the adults had gag gits. Then we'd take turns opening them. My dad usually had the best ones. He even branded his gifts "Brought to you by Jack LaLame" ( a call out to Jack LaLanne the fitness guru and health appliance pitchman). One year my dad took my Mountain Dew pogo stick from when I was a kid and stuck a toilet plunger head on it. He called it "Mr. Toilet". Another year, he took a corn cob, glued an extension cord onto the end of it, mounted it on some cardboard with zip ties, and wrote on it "Electric Toilet Paper".

Everyone else usually has great ones too. This year my brother Matt made a book titled "The Garrett Lexicon" which featured a weird word/phrase our family says followed by a definition and usage. "Scuzz," "Bodean Scunch," "Hunyak," "Goat Roper" got the most laughs. My oldest brother Darren made a DVD collection of movies "banned in North Korea" including "Despicable Me" and "Un Flew Over the Cukuoo's Nest". 

By the end, everyone is exhausted from laughing so hard - the type of laughter that leaves your face hurting for days - the type of laughter everyone rarely gets in their daily lives.

Times Have Changed For The Better

While Christmas is no longer the magical toy unwrapping spree it was when we were kids, it also isn't the anticlimactic gift card exchange it used to be. Ryan's kids are older now and his girls have taken over the game prep from their brother Alex. My brother Darren and his wife have two kiddos now and they fulfill the magical toy unwrapping spree dreams. With wives and girl friends and children, we're pushing 20 people now.

This year, I found out four hours before hand that my wife, Katie, and I had to host because Darren's wife was sick. While my kitchen/livingroom is fairly small, we crammed everyone in and all the warmth and love our family has come to have for each other filled the house and it was pretty magical. No one cared they were sitting on bent folding chairs covered in spray paint. No one minded Matt's funky Guacamole. Everyone just had a great time and left happy. When you come to Christmas and know you're going to get something on the order of "Electric Toilet Paper", it is hard to not have a good humor.

That is the essence of Garrett Faily Christmas these days: Good Humor