Several years ago, our children were going to start getting Christmas gifts for my wife and me. This was the first Christmas after my son had moved out of the house. The kids planned this change to our Christmas routine as a surprise. They would give us these gifts when we did our normal gift exchange on Christmas Eve. At that time our normal Christmas Eve routine was going to my father’s house and celebrating Christmas with him and my sister’s family, then coming home and exchanging gifts before we settled in to watch Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. My son, James, would stop by our house and ride with us to start the festivities at my dad’s.
When he got to our house, I was alone in the kitchen which is near the back door where he would enter. Our girls were upstairs in their rooms and my wife was in our bedroom getting dressed. When James came in the house, he yelled, “Girls! I’ve got dad’s gift!” He placed the bag on the dining room table near where I was standing. The girls immediately started yelling at him because he had spoiled the surprise. At some point, he was declared to be the “Asshole of Christmas” for ruining the surprise. From that point on sometime during the holiday season someone is pronounced to be that year’s Asshole of Christmas. While James has been the recipient of the title most often, our oldest daughter May got the title one year when she had to do some traveling over Christmas. The title is issued in good fun and can be for offenses great and small but the most memorable are for things that spoil surprises or cause a significant change to Christmas plans.
In 2021, May got the family a group gift. It was a Santa hat with “Asshole of Christmas” embroidered across the front. This gift was the last one that was opened that night. James was immediately declared this year’s recipient although everyone ended up wearing it sometime that night for a legitimate reason.