Yes, the holiday season is upon us, but before you decorate that tree or light the menorah, won’t you consider making this the year you give yourself the ultimate gift? We’re referring of course to the truth that every physical and mental ailment plaguing you is the result of alien ghosts who were exploded in a volcano on earth millions of years ago by a space tyrant.
Curious?
There’s a rumor out there that Scientology, a legitimate tax-exempt religious organization, lacks the fun, rich holiday traditions of a Christmas or Hanukkah. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, whoever told you that is probably a suppressive person jealous of our tech, and you should cut them out of your life completely! Here are just 30 time-honored Scientology holiday traditions that will have you saying “Christ is a lie orchestrated by modern psychology to impede me from achieving true actualization in this lifetime!”
A Photo With LRH!
Okay, you got us, it’s not the real L. Ron Hubbard, the REAL LRH shed his body years ago to combat an ancient thetan, but it is one of his helpers! Go to any American mall with a Santa Clause. Then go to the basement of said mall and you’ll find an LRH willing to interrogate your child and take a photo! Every L. Ron Helper has been meticulously modeled to resemble LRH right down to the contemptuous grin and the unmistakable smell of ketchup soup wafting on their breath!
The Kids Hunt For Shelly Miscavige
Scientologist families have enjoyed this festive tradition since 2007, in which the children are encouraged to search all through the house for any tangible evidence that Shelly Miscavige is alive and well! They won’t succeed of course, but the hunt builds character, and in a way, it keeps Shelly alive!
Watch “Days of Thunder”
Look kids, it’s our boy Tom Cruise! And he’s got a cool racecar! Look at the way he handles that thing! Those are the trademark reflexes of an Operating Thetan performing at peak efficiency if we’ve ever seen one!
Write A Holiday Wishlist To John Travolta, And Some Threats!
Who needs Santa Claus when you’ve got the star of “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease,” John Travolta?! Every year the Scientology celebrity center is flooded with letters from children telling John what gifts they want this year, and reminding him that they know a thing or two about certain sexual predilections he may or may not have that he definitely wants kept under wraps! How does John Travolta deliver gifts to all good Scientologist children in a single night? He has his own plane and a very shadowy past, that’s how!
The Harassment Of A Psychiatrist
So many ways to celebrate this tradition. You could make threatening phone calls to a psychiatrist. You could break into their home and just move stuff around so they know someone’s been there. You could make bogus complaints to the police about noise and spousal abuse. However you decide to celebrate, rest assured the psychiatrist deserves it. Their profession makes them an SP and a liar. We all know that mental illness only occurs when someone attempts to read “Excalibur” without the proper training!
Chores!
May they complete you as you complete them! Whether it’s scrubbing the decks of the Sea Org, handing out pamphlets to susceptibles downtown or just volunteering to be the person David Miscavige eats sushi off of for a day, you can’t be an Operating Thetan without operating!
Sign Another Billion-Year Contract
Sadly most acolytes of The Church Of Scientology are happy to just sign the one billion-year contract and call it a day, but real Scientologists understand that ridding yourself of alien volcano ghosts means total commitment! It’s the season of giving, so why not go ahead and pledge another billion years of servitude to the church?
Rank Your Enemies And Pledge To Destroy Them!
As altruistic purveyors of truth, Scientologists have a lot of high-profile enemies, and attacking them all would be a full-time job! Instead, why not pick a personal top 5 and focus on them? No one expects you to goad Beck into hitting you at the airport, urinate on William S. Burroughs’s grave, and leave threatening voicemails on Katie Holmes’s phone all in one year! Just harass Beck and mess with a few lower lever/more accessible Suppressive Persons in your area.
Battlefield Earth Pagent!
Whether your child is playing the head Psychlo or just a desolate mountain, you’ll cherish watching them re-enact the most thrilling L. Ron Hubbard story ever to be called “Not merely bad, unpleasant in a hostile way” by known SP Roger Ebert!
IRS Agent Dirt Dig!
Sure, the church has tax-exempt status for now, but a little insurance in the form of sensitive information goes a long way to keeping it for decades to come. Do you have hard evidence that an IRS employee has been unfaithful to their spouse or has a drinking problem? Send it Miscavige’s way!
Tell Us If You Have Ever Had Unkind Thoughts About L. Ron Hubbard or David Miscavige
Have you? You do need to tell us. It’s for your own good.
Watch “Vanilla Sky”
There’s our boy T.C. again! Boy, he looks good! Shredded! Even with his deformity makeup on the man is a specimen! Say it all together kids: “When you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not!” In other words, happy holidays!
Offer Free E-meter Readings To The Poor, But Like “Poor” As In Misfortunately Ignorant, Not Actually Poor
It’s the season of giving, so why not give a naive person who thinks they’re happy the gift of hooking them up to a pseudo lie detector and informing them that their body is full of suppressive ghosts? Just make sure they’re “poor” in the sense that they are unfamiliar with the world of L. Ron Hubbard, not poor financially. We’re trying to run a church, not some charity!
Aye Carumba, It’s Nancy Cartwright!
You better be good all year kids or the voice of Bart Simpson will throw you in a burlap sack and volunteer you for Sea Org duty!
Try To Break Danny Masterson Out Of Jail
It’s the newest Scientology holiday tradition, sort of like our elf on a shelf!
Clearly more Coke than Jack. I downed this in about three gulps while Dale from AP (I think? Maybe AR) was talking to me about how “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie and then somehow transitioned into how he thinks his wife might be cheating on him with his brother. I needed to be way more buzzed to deal with this.
Aero press, burr grinder, clover brewer, you’ve created quite the distraction for yourself and your so-called morning routine, falling headfirst into one of the last remaining socially acceptable substance addiction. However, you are learning to fuel your dreams, so it could still happen for you.
Growing your own vegetables like a real American homesteader. This is a great hobby because you’ll know how to live off the land when you’re dead broke because you sold all your possessions so you could afford to move to LA and become a screenwriter.
You could’ve gotten a pet. That would’ve been a lot better for your mental health than the monstera that withers when you look at it wrong. But there is no problem with having a living room jungle and still pursuing your dreams.
Ok we can’t legally endorse this as a hobby, and it’s definitely more of a “side hustle” than a “hobby.” But we’d be lying if we couldn’t easily name 10 or 15 former drug dealers who made it big following their dreams. So maybe just be discreet?
This is a great way to hone your writing skills while chronicling your failures. The bright side is, if you ever make it, you’ll have years’ worth of recorded strife to look back on and laugh. Like that time you couldn’t afford toilet paper so you used the pages of a book your ex-girlfriend left behind and you ended up with a real bad anus infection.
You, some spandex, and the open road. It’s just like touring, except now you’re in way better shape. Cycling also doubles as an excellent method of transportation so you can really use this hobby to literally get closer to dreams.
There’s no way this can’t help you. Simply no way. It improves other cognitive faculties like concentration, memory skill, and can even help with an aging brain. And, if you’re not talented enough to make it in your home country, you could learn the language of another and try to make it there.
You’ve paid the subscription and now you’re watching an online lecture from an industry titan who sold out. This is surprisingly good. You’re learning about the industry you dream about being a part of. All you have to do now is dedicate all your waking hours to pursuing your goals, but today you’re working a double shift, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.
Making the fun distracting hobby of drinking and making it involve manual labor and patience. This one takes you away from your goal and further into the back shed, fermenting with your thoughts. But hey, at least you’ve got a shed. And yeast. And you’re drunk as shit.
When is learning to think on your feet a bad thing? And hey, this could come in handy later when you’ve got a real job and your boss asks you how you could possibly be late for a Zoom meeting when you work from home.
You’ve got a lawn to care for so things aren’t so bad in the financial department. But still, if you’re obsessing over cultivating the perfect monoculture in your cookie-cutter neighborhood of slightly less-than-perfect monocultures, then dreams probably weren’t your thing to begin with, so you’re probably doing alright.
Your free time needs to be spent in a constant state of near-freefall to keep you from wondering “what if?” Or you think having massive forearms is a transferable skill, faster tremolo picking, perhaps? You could still do it, as long as you don’t fall.
You’ve started a podcast talking shop about the industry you’ve always dreamt of breaking into. Talking about others in it, asking others how they got started in it, criticizing the industry itself. It’s kind of like your dream right? RIGHT?
This is a lot of time and effort for something you can buy at any grocery store. It’s entirely possible you’re using this tedious hobby to distract you from accomplishing your dreams.
This might not be the artistic medium of your choice, but you can make it seem to others like you fully accomplished your dream with the right equipment, lighting, and editing skills. Also, this can double as a full side income if you get good enough and you spread nasty rumors about every wedding photographer living within 100 miles of you.
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes honestly don’t have a bad LP, but one had to be listed in the dreaded stinker position, so their sixth and latest record “Are We Not Men? We Are Diva!” despite having their best album title, is right here. Fun fact: MFATGG sometimes provide sizable Easter Eggs/Shiny Menorahs in the form of a punk intro from bands like they do on “Are We Not Men? We Are Diva” including T.S.O.L., The Dead Boys, The Buzzcocks, and The Dave Matthews Band just before they start the actual song that they are covering, and said parts are uber DELICIOUS, we tell ya! It’s been nearly a decade since this fantastic album came out, so let’s hear it for the boy(s), let’s give the boy a hand!
Even if you’re one of those derivative humans who spouts cliched garbage like, “I like all genres of music but hip-hop and country,” every chance that you get, there is still PLENTY to love about, uhh, “Love Their Country,” and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes showcase grit, diversity, melodic sensibilities, and straw hats on all twelve tracks of their fifth full-length studio LP here. Classic country and western songs from The (Dixie) Chicks, Garth Brooks, Kenny Rogers, and Ja Rule get the Gimme Gimmes’ treatment, and introduce such hits to a captive audience that, like we mentioned earlier, would have never had such open minds towards prior. Fun fact: “Love Their Country” is the band’s shortest, and thus, most digestible album, so take twenty-five minutes and twenty-eight seconds of your crappy day and inhale this one right this very moment.
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes’ third full-length effort and first non-’90s LP features the band’s sterling takes on classic 1960s hits like Cat Stevens’ “Wild World,” Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want to Be with You,” The Beatles’ “All My Loving,” and Salt-N-Pepa’s “None of Your Business.” The band kicked off the 21st century (digital boy) in style and each of the lucky thirteen tracks. Fun fact: 2001 was also an underrated year for MFATGG’s label Fat Wreck Chords with other releases from Rise Against (“The Unraveling”), MxPx (“The Renaissance EP”), Mad Caddies (“Rock the Plank”), and the soundtrack from “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” Funner fact: The band’s version of The Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B” from “Blow in the Wind” was featured twelve years later in Dr. Suess’ children’s classic “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
We bet you so much more than a rock that you didn’t think that Me First and the Gimme Gimmes would last much longer than their debut effort “Have a Ball” but we also surmise that you thought that Title Fight would be at Fall Out Boy’s heights by now. To this day, “Have a Ball” remains their best selling record, and with perfect covers like Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl,” John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and Morbid Angel’s “Lord of All Fevers & Plague,” can you blame the punk rock public? Not one tin soldier can! Shout outs to the OG Me First and the Gimme Gimmes lineup: Spike Slawson on vocals, Chris Shiflettt on lead guitar, Joey Cape on rhythm guitar, Fat Mike on bass, and Dave Raun on drums!
Oh girl, we are still very confused as to why this is the lone LP in the band’s six-record collection to NOT have a Wikipedia page, but we hope that this silver medal ranking here ensures one STAT. Depending on the day of the week, this could switch positions with the yet-to-be-mentioned gold medal effort, but today, “Take a Break” loses by a hair. If both you and Elenore are upset about this, don’t fret, our pets, as it is the first of two no “skip it” track efforts to be mentioned here. Seal, Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Rival Schools get the MFATGG treatment here and each vocal/harmony is showcased brilliantly with a much, much faster BPM… Now let’s please move on, as we saved the best for last!
Please riddle us this, what’s more punk rock than a freaking musical? Don’t cry for us Argentina OR answer that. Anyway, long, long before MFATGG stalwart Fat Mike’s punk rock musical “Home Street Home” was released, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes’ sophomore LP “Are a Drag” provided that the band was not capable of a sophomore slump, and the band blazed through its second shortest album with a one-twelve punch of effervescent Broadway and film splendor from such musicals as “A Chorus Line,” “Porgy and Bess,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Schindler’s List,” and the like. Your prom night will forever be soaked with menstrual blood from someone’s thighs if you have yet to spin this record, and we implore you to sing along, in any season rain or shine, with the body electric now or TOMORROW.