Unknown (3:13)

You know what's annoying about the Christmas season? Those super targeted ads that seem to follow you everywhere. You look at one gift idea for your cousin and suddenly every website is bombarding you with similar products.

Michael Knowles (3:24)

Well, here's the thing.

Unknown (3:25)

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Michael Knowles (4:19)

See Whatever joy there is to be gained from a Christmas tree, you aren't gonna get it from a fake one. A family with a fake tree has given up. They are just checking the tree box, trying to slide by on a technicality. You might as well put a deflated basketball on your porch at Halloween instead of a pumpkin. The stand in is significantly More depressing than just not having it at all. So that doesn't work. But the real tree is worse. First of all, it's going to run you upwards of $75 these days. $75 for a hunk of lumber that will be decaying in a heap on your front lawn. In less than a month, you could buy a bottle of Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon, Elijah Craig barrel proof even for that price. And it will make you far jollier than any Christmas tree ever will, I assure you.

Unknown (5:00)

Look at these little glasses, these little bottles. Isn't it cute? It's like a whole. It's like a whole bottle, but really small.

Michael Knowles (5:10)

So after you've been basically stripped naked and robbed by the Christmas tree salesman, you schlep the thing back to your house, you drag it inside, pine needles falling and dispersing themselves into areas of the house that you won't notice until sometime after Memorial Day. Then begins the process of somehow getting this whole entire actual tree to stand up straight in your house with nothing but a plastic tree stand and a couple of screws keeping it in place. If you do get it to stay in place, it'll inevitably be knocked over multiple times by the dog, the cat, your kids, people and pets getting practically crushed to death. Left. And meanwhile, the thing requires about 19 gallons of water a day just to keep it alive, and barely. So now you have a half dead, dried out chunk of wood in your house with electrical wires draped around it. Maybe next we can develop an Easter tradition where everybody jumps into a pool and plays catch with a toaster plugged into an extension cord. And then what happens? As soon as Christmas is over, it's like waking up with a hangover. You look at that thing and all of the joy and spirit is sucked out of it. Now you see it for the giant pile of sticks that it always was, and you just want it out of your house. Literally the day after Christmas, you're looking at your tree with disgust. Everybody does. Or if you have a fake tree, you just put off the hassle of taking it down for months until you finally get around to it. Only because you don't want people judging you when they come over for your fourth of July barbecue. So the whole thing is madness and it must end. We must free ourselves. We must stand up with one voice and refuse to be enslaved to this lunacy. It's gone on for too long. It ends today. And that's going to do it for me. My wife wants to go get a Christmas tree today, so we're going to go do that.

Unknown (6:54)

The Christmas tree certainly seems to inspire a love hate relationship. All that time is spent selecting it and decorating it and then a week after it's just thrown somewhere. You see it by the side of the road. Looks like a mob hit. Car slows down, the door opens and this tree just rolls up.

Michael Knowles (7:11)

A boom boom boom.

Unknown (7:13)

People snap out of that Christmas spirit like it was a drunken stupor. They just wake up one morning and go, oh my God, there's a tree inside the house. Just throw it anywhere.

Unknown (7:29)

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