Things are busy around here, trying to find the perfect gift for people you don’t see often, and going to various Christmas parties.  So posting has been a little slow the past few weeks (and will continue next week).  So here’s a quick post, just so you won’t have withdrawals too bad. 

If you don’t get the joke / pun, it’s that “Feliz Navidad” means “Merry Christmas” in Spanish.  I’m not sure if knowing that makes it any funnier (because it is a pun, after all), but it may cause some of you to groan (which I suppose is the purpose of puns).

For this week’s caption contest, I’m using a Christmas-themed photo.  Well, it features Santa Claus, so it’s festive and stuff.  But this is no ordinary holiday photo — Santa is driving an armored SWAT truck, and he’s being followed by a helicopter.  So obviously there’s some action story behind this picture.  And it’s up to you to write the story.

(To see the other caption contests, click on the “Say What?” category in the sidebar.)

In past years, we’ve discussed the giant straw Christmas goat built in Sweden every year.   I mean, what says Christmas like a 43-foot tall straw Christmas goat?  Well, I could probably think of a few things, but it’s tradition.  It’s also tradition for vandals to burn the goat down.

I could say a lot more, but it’s probably already been said in the first post, so I will link to that for your reading convenience: the Swedish Christmas goat.

I came across another article about it, and it’s rather funny.  Here’s that link: Goodness, Gracious Great (Swedish) Goats of Fire!

Here at Buffet o’ Blog, we are trying to start a tradition of building the next world-record-breaking giant straw Christmas goat, and then burning it down.   It would be one of the coolest things around (see the first link for details).   But so far, all we’ve done is start a tradition of Mango-Man saying it’s a great idea, but then he makes excuses (perhaps to protect his secret flower garden of ketunias), and it never happens.  Well, one of these years it will happen (with or without his consent — but if he gets a cut of the proceeds, he will realize what a great business opportunity it is).  The rest of the Buffet o’ Blog regulars have voted for this, so we’ve reached a consensus — a quorum, even — that this needs to happen.  When it does happen, it will be posted here first, so stay tuned.

This year, it seems people got into decorating for Halloween a lot more than normal.  And as you’ve probably noticed, retail department stores are pushing the Christmas decor on us before Thanksgiving.  It’s getting crazy.  I like to keep the holidays separate — my rule is no Christmas music or Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving.  But stores seem to not be informed of my rule.

Before long, these holidays will all become merged by the unstoppable commercialization process.  Figuring out how to market the holidays together might seem difficult, but fortunately someone has already figured all this out.  In the article I’m about to link to, Chris Carlisle combines Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  For a mascot / symbol, he creates a “ninja robot Mecha Santa Claus”.  If that’s not enough to get you to read the article, I don’t know what is…   Plus it’s funny, and he has a good way of explaining all this.

Holiday Ninja Action Force Unite!

For the new readers here, I want to let you know about a Christmas tradition in Sweden involving a giant straw goat.  And by giant, I mean over 40 feet tall.  And part of the tradition is that the goat gets burned down by arsonists almost every year.  However, last year they started putting some serious flame-retardant materials on it, so it hasn’t been burned down since.

Here’s what I wrote on it last year: the Swedish Christmas goat.

The city officials there probably think they’re quite clever in their current plans to prevent the giant goat from burning.  But what they don’t realize is that if the goat never burned, it wouldn’t be famous at all.  So with each year that it isn’t burned, it will become more obscure to the rest of the world.

And for the record, I could make it burn…  Nothing is truly fireproof, if you have the right stuff for the job…

And as you might’ve read in some recent comments, plans are underway to start a similar tradition in Mango-Man’s yard.  He doesn’t see the awesomeness of this plan yet, but we’ll eventually convince him (or just build it anyway and let him witness it first-hand).