You know them. They’re everywhere. Maybe they live next door to you, and through your paper thin ghetto-ass walls you can hear them scream at the top of their lungs at their poor girlfriend to get the screaming little shit of a kid because “I’m playing Xbox!” Maybe you actually heard one of them say to a 3-year old during the fireworks extravaganza you attended earlier this month “thanks a lot for ruining my Fourth of July. I guess I got beer at home to take care of that!” Maybe this makes you want to carry around abortion clinic business cards and stab pro-lifers with coat hangers. Either way, a couple of these fuck-hole members of society should be neutered or spayed faster than autistic alley cats with syphilis.

The first group is the parents with 11 damn kids at the Dollar Store. Every damn one of them running through the store with Big Gulp Code Red Mountain Dews, the world’s stickiest lollipops, and one of those fucking slimy/sticky-hand things from the bubblegum machines out front (which somehow already looks like it’s touched more carpet than Dick Cheney’s daughter.)

Now I have lot’s of friends with children, and all of them, until they get old enough to discover video games and text messaging, are always coated with some sort of brightly-colored flavored corn syrup/mud mixture. And I know when I hug them that I will be forced to go home and change my clothes. But these are my friend’s children. I love them. I don’t give a fuck about your slow-class kids who will no doubt grow up to invent the next generation’s crystal meth or potato gun. So please, next time leave them in the car, preferably with the windows rolled up under the hot sun, instead of keeping them close enough to play Spiderman with the back of my shirt in the checkout line as your personality-challenged ass ignores them all and reads fucking Us Magazine. Those are the typical bad parents. They almost get a pass. They probably had typically bad parents themselves and they just don’t know any better. Bless them.

The next group though is even worse. They are the parents of tomorrow’s suicides. They are a rarer breed, but one that you can spot nearly everywhere if you keep your eyes peeled. They are the over-the-top socially anxious parent. These parents are so goddamned afraid of human interaction that if their child so much as sneezes in public he’s out of dessert until Jesus comes home.

Now, I was recently down in Morehead City, North Carolina taking in some sun and human fuckery with old friends (shout out TimS with a big MC EIHT JEAH!) when I spotted this breed. As I ate a great dinner on an open patio with my back to the beautiful Crystal Coast I was nearly floored by the disgusting act of parenting that I witnessed. Our table was having a good damn time, snapping pictures, making jokes, and enjoying what my crew back home calls “good laughs” when the little man sitting next to me must have felt like it was his turn to join in the festivities, by turning and burping at me. That’s it. Just some silly little mouth gas and a smile.

Now this isn’t exactly good manners, or how he should probably behave, but judging by his mother’s reaction you’d have thought he committed a moral sin against God. This simple bitch proceeded to snatch little dude by the arm, drag him three feet down the bench, and snarl “say excuse me” in a voice that reminded me of Christian Bale as Batman. A little over the top I guess, but still, at this point I’m not ready to choke-slam the hooker. Nor am I about to put any of my limbs within striking distance of her mouth either. Not until she digs her nails into his thigh, and with tears in little dude’s eyes, says with that same snarl, (only whispering now) “You feel that? those are my nails!… you keep it up and…” Now I didn’t exactly get the rest of the threat, maybe the blood flowing into my head from the anger impaired my hearing, but all I know is it took everything I had not to Russian-sickle that dumb hoe into the ocean.

This sorry excuse for life really just dug her nails into her poor son’s leg while threatening him in public with more violence and somehow thinks in her simple fucking brain this is less of a scene then the little burp and a smile? Young man, if by some fucked-up event of fate you ever come across this rant floating around on the internet when you’re older (and searching for some identity), you run far, far away from that bitch. Immediately stop trying to gain her approval and run, dude. It’ll never happen, I barely met her over a half-hour dinner and I can tell you that will be one miserable cunt until the day she dies. Run!

Before settling in to celebrate the holiday, Joint Contrast contributor Dank Lucas dug deep to uncover “The 9 Lil’ Known Wiki-facts of Christmas.” They are Included below for your holiday amusement. “I mean, it’s according to Wikipedia,” said Lucas of the list. “Take it for what it is. You didn’t actually think I was going to put in any real work over Christmas did you?” (Typical Dank… Enjoy!)

9.) Jesus Christ’s real name is believed to have been Joshua Bin Yosef - Some say Jesus probably lived in Galilee for most of his life where he spoke Aramaic and Hebrew, and that the name “Jesus” comes from an alternate spelling of the Latin “Lesus,“ which in turn comes from the Greek name “Lesous.” It’s since been translated into English as “Joshua” by way of the Greek’s transliteration of the Jewish Scriptures (Hebrew/Aramaic), where the name became “Yeshua”, as in “he will save.” Scholars believe that one of these was likely the name that Jesus was known by to his peers. “Christ” (which is a title and not a part of his name) is an Anglicization of the Greek term for Messiah, literally meaning “anointed one.”

8.) December 25^th was a holiday long before Christianity - “Sol Invictus” or ”Unconquered Sun” was the Roman state-supported sun god created by the emperor Aurelian in 274. It is said that the Romans held a festival on Dec. 25 called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (the birthday of the unconquered sun). Dec. 25 apparently was the date after the winter solstice with the first detectable lengthening of daylight hours. When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar in 45 BC, Dec. 25 was noted as the approximate date of celebration. In modern times, the solstice falls on Dec. 21 or 22. 

7.) Yule or Yule-tide was a Germanic midwinter pagan festival involving a sacrificial feast that was absorbed into Christmas - The pagan Germanic peoples celebrated Yule from late December to early January on a date determined by the lunar Germanic calendar, but the festival was placed on Dec. 25 when the Christian (Julian) calendar was adopted.

6.) Saint Nicholas of Myra is the primary inspiration for the Christian figure of Santa Claus - They say he was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Anatolia which is now in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes.

5.) Images of Santa Claus were further popularized through Haddon Sundblom’s depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company’s Christmas advertising in the 1930s - The popularity of the image spawned urban legends that Santa Claus was in fact invented by Coca-Cola or that Santa wears red and white because they are the Coca-Cola colors. In reality, Coca-Cola was not the first soft drink company to utilize the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising. White Rock Beverages used Santa to sell mineral water in 1915 and then in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923. Furthermore, it has been said that the massive campaign by Coca-Cola simply popularized the depiction of Santa as wearing red and white, in contrast to the variety of colors he wore prior to that campaign.

4.) The Puritans of 17th-century England and America banned the holiday as either pagan or Roman Catholic - Following the English Civil War, under Oliver Cromwell’s government, Christmas was banned. Then following the restoration of the monarchy, and with Puritans out of power in England, the ban on Christmas was satirized in works such as Josiah King’s The Examination and Tryal of Old Father Christmas.

3.) Christmas is bad for the economy - Christmas is typically the largest annual economic stimulus for many nations. Sales increase dramatically in almost all retail areas and shops introduce new products as people purchase gifts, decorations, and supplies. An economists analysis calculates that Christmas is a deadweight loss under the orthodox microeconomic theory, due to the surge in giving gifts. This loss is calculated as the difference between what the gift giver spent on the item and what the gift receiver would have paid for the item. It is estimated that in 2001 Christmas resulted in a $4-billion deadweight loss in the U.S. alone. Because of complicating factors, this analysis is sometimes used to discuss possible flaws in the current microeconomic theory.

2.) Santa and Baby Jesus are in cahoots! - The current tradition in several Latin American countries (such as Venezuela and Colombia) holds that while Santa makes the toys, he then gives them to Baby Jesus, who is actually the one that delivers them to the children’s homes. This story is meant to be a reconciliation between traditional religious beliefs and modern day globalization, most notably the iconography of Santa Claus imported from the United States.

1.) Xmas has been an alternative spelling of Christmas long before current religious debates over the abbreviation - Some believe that the term is part of an effort to “take Christ out of Christmas” or to literally “cross out Christ”. It is seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas, as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday because the abbreviation has long been used by retailers. Some say the word “Christ” and its compounds, including “Christmas”, have been abbreviated in English for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern “Xmas” was commonly used. “Christ” was often written as “XP” or “Xt” as referenced in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as AD 1021.