[xmas card]
The holidays are a joyous time of year, citizen, so please conform to the following:
1: You hate some people in your family and they are terrible people but you must treat them with benevolence regardless.
2: You will spend far more money on gifts than you receive each year, and of the gifts you receive at least 75% will go unused. You must do your part to maintain the enduring engine of the economy!
3: You must travel to perform the shopping ritual, which involves spending too much to receive too little, and competing with other citizens for this privilege. It may involve driving, if you are fortunate enough to be able to pay for a car.
4: Christmas music is the most beautiful music during the harsh months of winter. There are four Christmas songs; it is your duty as a citizen to listen to them until you want to die. You must do your part to carry these important pieces of our culture into the future!
5: Everyone will open one gift, and then another set of gifts will be distributed. The person who received the fewest gifts shall sit mute and smiling while everyone else continues to open theirs. The person who received the most gifts shall continue opening them in increasingly difficult-to-feign enjoyment.
6: At no time shall negativity be expressed, and at no time shall a smile fade in the presence of others. Your child may have committed suicide last Christmas but you are expected to radiate joy this Christmas. This is a cost-effective method for the State to maintain morale during the bleak winter months. You must do your part!
7: The food cooked may be bland and uninspiring, or else overcooked and greasy. You must consume sufficient calories to sustain an adequate body weight throughout the winter. Mother Nature may be at peace and rest during the winter, but as a citizen you will continue to work throughout all seasons of your lifespan.
8: You may be one of the few who escaped genetic evaluation at birth and/or have developed an allergy to pine later in life. Regardless of the amount of mucous you selfishly wish to expel, your family is expected to purchase and decorate an approved Holiday Tree. Secondary infections are no reason to shirk your responsibilities as a citizen!
9: Children are the future of our ever-productive society. They must experience joy when young and unformed so that when they begin their terrible lives as adults they have some memories awash with the golden light of nostalgia. While children may be horrible beasts to deal with, so frequently encrusted with filth and/or screaming and striking anything within reach and/or putting forth unreasonable demands, it is your duty as a citizen to cater to their every whim. Especially if you have not yet impregnated a woman or extruded a child of your own! Assisting parents so they may remain sane enough to not murder their brood is not your only civic duty, but also you must withstand continual assertions that you too must become a parent. You must do your part!
10: You will wish to sleep, on a couch or nearby snowbank. If not because you are exhausted and this is your first day off in months, but possibly to shirk your duties as a citizen. You shall be rightly castigated by your family, taunted until you wake to find that the children have written upon you with pens and the adults have captured your weakness with their cellular-phone cameras. These pictures will be automatically collected and added to your file.
The State Department of Culture would like to express that your obedience, though compulsory, is noted with approval.
[/xmas card]