“Cousin Eddie” and the Christmas Season


We’ve made it to Christmas week and with it watching the traditional holiday movies we sit through every year.  My brother loves “It’s a Wonderful Life” while my sister likes “Miracle on 34th Street”.  My favorite is “National Lampoon Christmas Vacation”.  I find it hard to believe that it has been out 20 years now and it still brings us laughter year after year.

This is the classic tale of a man trying to have a ‘good old’ family Christmas with his "good old" family.  The quiet dream of every man, I think, is to have that perfect holiday.  Too bad like the movie it never quite turns out that way.

There's a reason the "Cousin Eddie" character in Christmas Vacation resonates with so many.  We've all got a Cousin Eddie, or two, in our extended families.  Some of us . . . are Cousin Eddie.

Probably many of our families weren't designed for a televised Christmas special as our dysfunction would be awkward on TV.  Who knows with the current crop of “Reality TV” shows it may be just what everyone wants to view between meals.

The problem usually lies in the fact that most of us have at least one Eddie. You know who he or she is . . . Eddie is the relative that just missed the bus.  The one you know is a couple sandwiches short of a picnic.  He (or sometimes she) has a heart as big as the great outdoors.  So big in fact that it covers his eyes to the whole world.

He will ruin plans, destroy the house, upset the sleeping arrangements, eat the left over ham you wanted for breakfast, and just about everything else you can imagine.  Eddie is the X-factor in most holiday gatherings.  He’s just so deliciously white trash.  Eddie’s “dress clothes” . . . the white sweater with a black dickey . . . with the dickey very obviously showing through the sweater, just the right amount of tacky thrown in.

He might not be here yet arriving just before Christmas day or could be sitting in your living room at this very moment.  Sucking back eggnog or your beer and picking his teeth with an ornament hook.  Eddie is what makes most people never want to have a Christmas ever again . . . especially if the RV is parked in the front yard.

But that is what makes family complete, a Holiday season complete as well.  That may be one of the reasons I moved thousands of miles away from family to the vast white wasteland . . . I am probably the ‘Eddie’ in my family, lol.

Happy Holidays everyone . . . let the festivities begin and the light shine upon your family.

Ice

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