How To Not Do It In 2013

If you host on Christmas day and want everyone except you to have a great time, try to be a hero.  Blow a cool $240 on food and agree to make nine dishes on your own.  Take on the world all by your lonesome, out of a combination of ambition and pride.  Invite three people you like and have one of those people invite randoms.  Shut down on a social level when the randoms arrive an hour and a half late with an extra person.  In fact, don't talk to them at all.  Keep panicking over preparing food and creating ambiance, but don't inhabit the space in an emotional capacity.  When the food is ready and served, don't eat it.  Just watch every one else eat and piddle around the house, finding excuses to get up and tend to something.  Then get back to watching the guests eat.  This is typically the moment your efforts come to fruition, and everyone hopefully gushes over how good the food is.  Your guests will comment on the meal, but you'll still feel dissatisfied because you are insecure and wanted more praise.

Do over drink.  It'll come in handy when someone passes you a joint later.  Take too many hits so you feel ill and need to barricade yourself in your room for fear of throwing up rack of lamb in front of the randoms.  Stay in your bedroom for a good while as everyone else enjoys the party.  Talk yourself down and manage to join your guests for a bit before gagging at the sight of leftover meat and dried mashed potatoes sitting on the table.  Excuse yourself quickly and run to bathroom to throw up stomach juice that tastes like steak and wine.  Beg your closest friend to help with a possible exit strategy.  She'll be kind enough to clear the table of food so you can sit with the others and try to be social, but do ruin it by continuously staring at your guest's boyfriend.  She will notice, because you can't seem to stop, and start making a very public display of her affection. Counter that by looking only at her for the rest of the evening, no matter who's talking.

When you hear a reggae song come on the stereo, start hooting like a Jamaican Howard Dean, to lighten the mood.  Your guests will say nothing and seem uncomfortable with your absurdity.  Be openly embarrassed by your "mistake."  Shift energy by proposing to play dominoes, but don't understand the game, never make your move in under five minutes and still somehow win without trying, so everyone will hate you.  Make a few jokes that fall flat, just to make it official.  Let people linger at the party, after it's obvious you're energetically flat-lining.  Smile graciously when the guests who said they'd chip in, leave without chipping in.  Thank them for coming anyway.  Awkwardly insist on hugging the boyfriend goodbye just because you hugged everyone else and want to seem equal opportunity, and therefore inconspicuous.  As your last guest passes out on the couch, do all the dishes by yourself.  It will take two hours to complete clean up.  Pass the time by calling your mother, and bore her to tears with complaints about how indignant you feel in doing all the work for your holiday party.  Your self righteousness will feel justified.  Eventually your mother won't want to talk to you anymore and says she needs to get off the phone.  This will make you feel totally demoralized.  Go to bed but wake up exhausted and depressed.  Be late to work.  Question your decision to spend Christmas in New York.  Question a lot of other things.