Christmas Rant

 

Christmas! The holly-jolly season of joy, cheer, and slowly losing all grip on reality as retail jingles drill directly into your cortex. “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” plays on loop while you develop mall PTSD and wonder how wrapping paper suddenly costs more than rent.

Every commercial wants you to buy a luxury SUV with a bow on it. A bow. Like someone woke up on Christmas morning and said, “Honey, I thought socks, a book, and seasonal depression weren’t enough … so I bought you a car we can’t afford.”

Also, the lights. The lights. I plug in one string and my house blows a fuse like it’s trying to protect me from holiday optimism. The neighbor’s display syncs to Trans-Siberian Orchestra and can be seen from space; mine flickers like a sad interrogation lamp.

And the decorating pressure! If a single pine needle falls, someone on Instagram will whisper, “Do they even love Christmas?” Yes, I love Christmas … I’m just losing a silent war with Scotch tape and ribbon that behaves like it has free will.

Meanwhile, Christmas cookies magically become currency. We trade them like sugary NFTs of seasonal affection. Here is a tin of baked love. Cherish it until New Year’s, when we transfer our emotional burdens to gym memberships.

But ultimately, it’s magical, right? We sit by the glow of tree lights, sip cocoa, and ignore receipts like they can’t hurt us if we don’t look directly at them.

Merry Christmas.

May your gift receipts be long and your tree water not smell like swamp soup by December 26th.

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In my family, we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, which basically means December is a festive emotional obstacle course with twice the candles, twice the carbs, and enough decorative lighting to make the neighbors question whether we're trying to signal passing aircraft. It’s chaotic. It’s beautiful. It’s glitter, menorah wax, and cookie crumbs everywhere. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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How 'bout a holiday song just for marketing writers? Grab a mug of hot chocolate and sing along to: "White Christmas (A Copywriter's Carol)" 

Marketers, grab a mug of hot chocolate and sing along.

Holiday music. 

Turn on the radio, walk into a store and you're surrounded by seasonal tunes: Jingle Bells, Let It Snow, Sleigh Ride, Feliz Navidad. 

But nothing specifically for the marketing community that has worked so hard to bring Jingling Hershey Kisses, Coca Cola swigging polar bears, and prancing Budweiser Clydesdales to life to support holiday consumerism.

Nothing until now.

Grab a mug of hot chocolate and sing along to: "White Christmas (A Copywriter's Carol)" 

Write Christmas (A Copywriter's Carol)

I'm dreaming of a Write Christmas

Just like the ads I used to know

Where the headlines glisten, and clients listen

To pitches that just seem to flow

I'm dreaming of a Write Christmas

With every landing page I draft

May your CTAs be focused and tight

And may all your copy be just right

I'm dreaming of a Write Christmas

Where deadlines don't fall Christmas Eve

Where stakeholders approve on the first review

And "one quick change" means what they say

I'm dreaming of a Write Christmas

With every content piece I type

May your concepts be strong and airtight

And may all your revisions be light

I'm dreaming of a Write Christmas

With every email blast I write

May your open rates excite and delight

And may all your campaigns convert tonight

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Behind the music: The goal was to write and produce a fun holiday song for marketing and advertising folks (focus on the writers) in the style of the Christmas songs of the 1940s and 1950s. This song was written by a human and produced with AI-assistance. The AI tools used were trained on unlicensed/not copyrighted material. The artwork of the snowman working on the laptop was generated 100% by AI.

Perfection

There’s a myth that keeps us chasing our tails. It comes dressed in motivational quotes slapped over sunset photos and Instagram grids where no one ever has spinach stuck in their teeth. It whispers, keep it together, polish the edges, never let them see you sweat. And if you can pull off the performance long enough, you’ll finally arrive at that golden finish line called perfection.

Here’s the truth: perfection is smoke. You can’t catch it. You can’t keep it. It’s a mirage somebody’s trying to sell you so you’ll buy their book, or their course, or their cream that promises to make you ten years younger.

Life isn’t marble floors and designer lighting. Life is the chipped mug you drink from every morning because it just feels right in your hand. It’s the dent in your car door from the time you misjudged the mailbox. It’s the day you thought you couldn’t keep going ... and somehow did.

Things break. You break. And that’s not the end of the story. It’s the part that makes the story worth telling.

Take crayons. Snap one in half and it doesn’t lose its purpose. It still makes marks, maybe bigger, maybe bolder, maybe less predictable. The box might look neat and orderly, but it’s the busted crayon that sprawls across the page and leaves a trail you can’t ignore.

People are no different. Scars, mistakes, screw-ups ... those aren’t blemishes on your record, they’re the fingerprints of resilience. Proof you’ve been knocked down and chose to stand back up anyway.

Perfection doesn’t move anyone. It might earn polite applause, but it won’t change a single soul. What does? The jagged edges. The cracks where the light sneaks out. The willingness to keep stepping forward when everything in you says stay down.

That’s what people rally around. That’s what gives somebody else permission to try, to risk, to show up even when they’re terrified of falling flat on their face.

So stop waiting until you’ve got it all figured out. Stop rehearsing for a flawless performance that doesn’t exist. Put your messy, dented, glorious self out there and make a mark.

Because in the end, nobody remembers the perfect ones. They remember the ones who bled, stumbled, laughed in the wrong places, and kept going anyway.

That’s not failure. That’s life. 

Hanukkah Rant

 

Ah yes, Hanukkah … that beautiful time of year when we honor miracles, light candles, and participate in the sacred tradition of making our kitchens smell like fried potatoes for eight to twelve business days.

When chain stores decide they're experts on Jewish tradition. “Celebrate Hanukkah with us!” they say, proudly displaying three sad blue gift bags, a menorah that looks like it was designed by someone who’s only seen Judaism from a distance, and a single box of matzo from last April because “it seemed close enough.”

Meanwhile, commercials act like Hanukkah is just Christmas Lite™ ... “Give BIG GIFTS for EIGHT NIGHTS!” Sorry, pal, we don’t do eight nights of giant presents. This isn't Santa’s endurance event. By night three we're already in “here’s socks and a chocolate coin, don’t get greedy” territory.

And the latkes. Oh, the latkes. Social media is alive with “Make perfect golden potato pancakes effortlessly!” Effortlessly?! Have you ever grated potatoes for latkes? By the end my knuckles look like I lost a bar fight with a cactus. I am sweating, crying, and questioning whether potatoes are worth emotional trauma. (They are. Always. But still.)

Then there’s the dreidel. Ads show elegant families spinning dreidels like it's some refined intellectual pastime. Meanwhile, in real life, someone is yelling because the chocolate gelt melted on the carpet and someone else is arguing about whether gimmel counts if the dreidel fell off the table.

You want the real miracle? Keeping track of which night we're on when opening the junk drawer, finding 14 Hanukkah candles, 3 birthday candles, and panicking until someone yells, “Alexa, how many nights of Hanukkah are left?”

But it’s wonderful. It's warm. It's light in the dark. It’s potatoes and songs and cozy sweaters and one cousin who takes latke-making way too seriously insisting theirs are crispier because they “felt the ancestors guiding their frying technique.”

Happy Hanukkah. May your candles burn bright, your oil not splatter like it’s trying to fight you, and your dreidel land on gimmel at least once when someone’s actually watching.

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In my family, we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, which basically means December is a festive emotional obstacle course with twice the candles, twice the carbs, and enough decorative lighting to make the neighbors question whether we're trying to signal passing aircraft. It’s chaotic. It’s beautiful. It’s glitter, menorah wax, and cookie crumbs everywhere. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Speaking of Christmas, here's a Christmas rant and a Christmas song.