Happy holidays to all of our museum patrons! As the curator of the MOKS, I take special glee at creating a Christmas exhibit for you every year. Some years go more smoothly than others. This year, due to unexpected (and kind of gross) circumstances, I got derailed. And just the weensiest bit lacerated. So the MOKS staff Yankee Swap has been postponed for a couple of days and instead, we’re taking the tacky way out. We’re Regifting.

So lets dispense with the formalities and enjoy my personal favorite part of the holidays – rehashing all of the wrongs that have been perpetrated against me the leftovers! We’re going to blackmail the ghost of MOKS past to take us on a sentimental(ly ill) journey back in time. Turns out that ghosts of things past are just as susceptible to bad choices in front of a camera as the rest of us. Lucky us!

Merry Kitschmas!!

Stitchy McYarnpants and the entire MOKS Staff!

Here’s an oldie but goodie from 2004 – the very first MOKS Christmas Craptacular!

And here are a couple of my favorites from this exhibit:

This festive wreath evokes all the charm and warmth of a toilet seat on a cold Christmas morning. Honestly, spend the $5 at the grocery store and get a real one. Or go into the woods to collect some fresh foliage and make one. Or steal one from the neighbors. Or buy a plastic one. Or hang a dead cat on your door. Anything but this.

You know what this world needs? Fewer drunk rabbits in yellow pants ranting about the rising price of carrots and Medicare not covering the cost of his fake foot that those bastards thought was lucky – lucky for who, tell me that! – and another thing, I love you man. Merry Kizzm . . . kizzmu . . . kriszzmi . . . Happy Holidays ~belchhh~

You may as well wrap a shiny new butcher knife with this lil’ treasure because when he comes to life, he’s just going to head to the kitchen to get one anyway. How else is he going to kill everyone in the house in a violent orgy of blood and screaming?

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And in 2005, we took a wild ride on a magic carpet made of a 1978 Sears Catalog!

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Welp, you might as well face it. Its time for the company party again. For the past three years you’ve avoided it by reporting the same grandmother’s death over and over again. They’re on to you and you will be participating in the Yankee Swap this time around. Forget thoughtful. Forget practical. This year, prove your disdain with inexplicable uselessness. The Coney Island Steamer is guaranteed to bring a frown to everyone it gets unloaded on. This thing will get passed around the office faster than Tammy in accounting. While the name brings to mind something you might find in a porta-potty under the docks, the Coney Island Steamer itself proves just about as useful. Hot dogs. One at a time. Perfect for that family of five who don’t mind waiting eons for their clammy portion of soggy bread and pig lips lovingly encased in animal intestine.

. . . Pedro the Christmas Burro can rest easy this year. It’s Frosty’s turn to take one for the team and martyr himself in the name of Christmas. Fill him up, arm the kids, and teach them the true meaning of the season. Blindly beat the crap out of stuff until you get what you want. In this case, piles of candy falling from the torn and battered corpse of a snowman.

(please enjoy the name of this photo, it still tickles me)

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Again in 2005, we returned to the Sears Catalog for a look at some holiday appropriate attire:

Mommy is going to wear her polyester caftan because once the holiday eating starts, it’s not going to stop until she’s asked to leave for making the rest of the family uncomfortable.

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And yet again, we returned. Boy, we milked that Sears Catalog for all it was worth . . . or DID we?? (stay tuned)

In this exhibit, we made a number of readers’ Christmas dreams come true. In a virtual way, of course:

For jenifleur, it’s her heart’s desire. A Super Star Barbie, complete with stage set! She can control Barbie’s Super Diva hissy fits by remote control – now with vase-throwing action! Articulated wrist lets Barbie toss back cocktails, pop pills and gesticulate wildly at Ken’s ridiculous assertions that maybe she has a problem.

Stephanie, please accept out apologies, you’re going to have to go commando. Sears had no Underoos to offer, but I agree, they did look “Fun to Wear!” Being naked under your clothes is fun, too. But now you can stretch to your heart’s content with Stretch Armstrong and his new “companion”, the Stretch Serpent. He appears to be a product of the unholy union between a Sleestack and a bookworm who’s been reading too much in the dark, but he and Stretch are in love and that’s all that matters.

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2006 did not see a special Holiday Exhibit. We lost a lot of peripheral staff members you’ve never heard of in the War on Christmas that year. It was tough, but if you’re going to go around callously wishing people “Happy Holidays”, well, you get what you deserve. Oddly, all of those staff members were given red jerseys as their uniform. Huh.

But there was a Christmas-in-August sort of thing that year!

This Kandy Klown is the worst of both worlds for a kid. Its arrival on Christmas morning could very possibly be enough of a buzz-kill to ruin the whole day. Pep-O-Mint is the least loved of all sugary confections. Well, it’s a close second to a giant block of sticky ribbon candy, anyway. Perching the decapitated head of a clown on top does nothing to add to its appeal. Graft on some ambiguous yarn limbs and you’ve got what grandma would call an “adorable treat” and what junior can’t wait to strap an entire package of firecrackers onto.

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And finally, last year, we launched a full-fledged investigation into the War on Christmas. We really wanted to get our red uniforms back. See the shocking report here!

Here is an excerpt of our Nobel Prize Winning documentation of the scene on the ground:

Once inside, they spied Santa and one of his favored elves lounging in the workshop.

After incurring heavy fines for operating under sweatshop conditions many years ago, Santa was thought to have improved conditions for his workers. Conditions have changed, alright. In fact, no toymaking was going on at all. Conveyor belts, doll-painting machines and jack-in-the-box stuffers have all been replaced with hot tubs and massage tables. The only toys in sight were the sort exclusively available to those with proper ID, many wrapped in plain paper so they could be delivered inconspicuously to the homes of Santa’s new, seamier clients. The environment could only be described as disturbingly over-affectionate.