Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I enjoy the music, gifts, food and atmosphere, which is why I start celebrating it before the turkey lands on the table in November.
As always, I’m busy around the holidays and accept any help offered to me. When my Uncle Vinny offered to write our family’s annual Christmas letter, I thought to myself, it’s an easy enough task and he has an outline to follow, so it should be OK.
His version of events although true, were written and sent to the entire family and all our friends without my review. It was supposed to highlight the positive sides of our year. It was sent out like this:
Merry Christmas people! Here’s the annual Christmas letter fillin’ ya all in on what we’ve been up to in 2025.
The New Year started with a firecracker that went bad on me. I bought them from a friend who had a bunch left over in his van from a couple years ago. The “salutes” went off early, taking a few of my fingertips with them at midnight. After getting outta the hospital, cops took me to jail. I got hurt, wasn’t that bad enough without having to go to the slammer, too?
In February, my niece Anngee’s Great Dane got pregnant by my American hairless terrier. The scary-looking litter of 12 pups made her so mad she sold my dog while I was at work. She left the 12 puppies on my doorstep. To make things worse that month, my wife said I didn’t deserve anything for Valentine’s Day.
St. Patty’s Day was a lot of fun until I pinched a party-goer. I thought that’s what people do on that day. I was charged with simple battery.
In March, I also needed to get a colonoscopy.
I thought for spring I’d do something nice for my niece since she’s always mad at me. While they were away for a week, I planted some vines I found. I replanted them in her backyard garden. She loves climbing vines. I had no idea it was kudzu when I went out picking. It took three days for them to find their house under all of it.
She threatened never to speak to me again after a grilling accident that occurred because I dozed off while cooking. I also made her mad after taking a peewee football team to a game in my bus via the Tail of the Dragon route.
Other summer activities included a zip-lining adventure. I’m not sure what happened, but somehow I crossed over onto electric company power lines and shorted out the entire park’s system. That was a bad day. I still have some burns to prove it. Good thing the line was low voltage or I may have ended up like black toast.
During the fall, we took a family camping trip. I put the tent up so we could view the mountains of western North Carolina. Everything was great until all the fire ants our tent was set on top of came out on us at 2 a.m. The screaming was similar to that of a horror film. Everyone from cops to firefighters and EMTs arrived at our campsite after numerous calls to 911.
Now Christmas is here! I’ll be putting tiny gift trinkets in my fruitcake recipe this year that will blend in with the fruit. Everyone will be getting a cool surprise something from me on Christmas. I’m hoping this will add more fun to our festive gathering and the gifts will make up for my past mistakes. Merry Christmas, ya’ll.
My annual Christmas letter turned out to be an Uncle Vinny self-pity fest on pretty paper. If the dope didn’t do things that made folks wonder if he was raised by animals in the forest, perhaps he wouldn’t feel so “woe is me.”
Now I have to remind everyone to be careful when eating his darn fruit cake on Thursday.
Anngee Quinones-Belian of Murphy is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Her humor column runs every other week. Email her at anngeeq@gmail.com.