Honestly, the picture doesn’t do it justice.

All the multi-colored glory you see before entails sitting and decorating hundreds and hundreds of anise cookies, by hand, while drinking more brown liquor than you could possibly stomach. These people could only seem to communicate effectively through icing, nonpareils, and scotch.

Most of the year they sniped, snarked, and ripped into each other about literary tastes. Or perhaps how Teebs didn’t “really” sample everything that made Ardour such a great body of work. Or trombone polish. Or exactly how brittle the glass ceiling actually was in the 70s. But this time of year? All topics of discussion were shrank down to the size and frequency of silver dragees on the shittily cut trees that we were slathering with buttercream.

Misery and Ardour bring solidarity, yeah? Even for people who don’t share the same blood. It was fascinating to watch and listen to.

Note carefully Charlie Brown, Mario Star, and Afro-Wreath. These, amongst other bits of nonsense, were mine. I feel that if you’re going to sit there and decorate cookies for going on 3 or more hours, you really need to have a sense of humor.