Guys, this year I want to put the Chris back in Christmas. I’m talking about my friend Chris. Chris, are you reading this? I’ll send you a link. I’m really sorry about last Christmas. My friends and I did this Secret Santa, you know like just amongst the friends. I picked Chris, and I thought it would be a really cool to get him a custom t-shirt, it would have said, “Christmas 2012” but “Chris” would be highlighted in red, and, “tmas 2012,” in green.

That’s what it was supposed to say, but the printers must not have read my order that thoroughly, because it said, “Christ,” in red, with the rest written in green. And yeah, I was so pumped, all patting myself on the back because I got the present done way ahead of time, seriously, like I had this thing mailed to my house not even a week after Thanksgiving. But I never opened it to check the order, so Chris’s surprise at the seemingly Christian themed Christmas shirt, it was identical to mine, because honestly that was the first I’d seen it.

And what are you going to do, start hemming and hawing about how, “I swear, I ordered this thing in advance, I’m really sorry,” no, I just went with it, tried to make it like a joke. But Chris definitely wasn’t into it. The shirt was way too big on him, yeah, I guess XL was the wrong choice, but I don’t know, sometimes you get a t-shirt from the Internet and they’re all way too small. Plus, you wash them once and they shrink up almost like a size and a half. But yeah, Chris put it on, I guess he was trying to be a good sport about it, but it looked terrible, he wouldn’t even be able to wear it ironically.

What sucked the worst was, Chris wound up picking me, and he bought me a second controller for my XBOX. I mean, one, it’s something that I’d use all the time, in fact, I use it constantly, to this day, it’s sitting right there on my coffee table. And two, that’s expensive, like fifty, sixty bucks, right? My custom t-shirt was maybe twenty-five with shipping. And even though I thought it was supposed to be more the thought that counts, apparently there was a fifty dollar suggested price tag, I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t paying attention.

And then on New Years Eve, whatever, I thought it would have been cool if we both wore our Chris-Christmas shirts because, yeah, I got one for myself also. But he didn’t wear his, so I didn’t want to take off my hoodie, obviously he was a little pissed about it. I wound up buying him a twenty-five dollar gift certificate to Cold Stone Creamery, but he didn’t say thanks or anything, he put it on the coffee table and “forgot” it when he left for the night. And then it was so hot in there, once he left I thought it would have been OK to take the hoodie off.

But it wasn’t until the next day, I went on Facebook and saw that I’d been tagged in a bunch of photos wearing the t-shirt. Chris had left a comment, but he must have changed our friendship settings, because I couldn’t see what it said, it only let me know that he had commented. So I called up my friend Cliff, I said, “Can you believe what Chris wrote on Facebook?” and he said, “I didn’t check, hold on.”

I waited for like a minute and Cliff said, “Well, what did you expect?” So he must have written something nasty, but I didn’t want to give it away that I’d been blocked, so I never did find out exactly what Chris wrote. And that was it, I saw Chris a few times that summer, but I got the impression that he wasn’t really interested in being friends anymore. And yeah, it’s not like we were especially close anyway, but we could have been close, a lot closer, if only I had double checked, ordered that shirt a size or two smaller, maybe included the Cold Stone gift card with the shirt.

So this year, Merry Chris-tmas, I’m putting the Chris right back, I got him a shirt, I made sure it was the right size, and yeah, maybe he won’t have it, hopefully he’s still not carrying a grudge, but I got him an Outback Steakhouse gift card just in case. And it shouldn’t be awkward, because I wasn’t even included in the Secret Santa this year, so maybe everyone will see my good intentions, they’ll let me back in for next year, they’ll say, “Wow, Rob really turned that around. What a good sport. And he didn’t even get anything in return,” so maybe they’ll feel a little bad, and they’ll chip in and buy me something for the New Years party. Maybe. Whatever I’m not expecting it, and if it doesn’t happen, whatever, it doesn’t happen. But it would definitely be a nice gesture. Merry Christmas everybody.