The Twelve Beers of Christmas

I come from a very large Italian family. You know the kind that I'm talking about -- a room full of thirty people and they're all aunts, uncles and first cousins. Loud, opinionated and everyone has a mustache (kidding...kind of). We usually head down down to New Jersey for Christmas Eve with my family and then drive home to spend Christmas Day with Joe's parents. What this means is that annually I'm scrambling to come up with A LOT of presents that don't break the bank for A LOT of people.

There's nothing I hate more than wasting money on junk someone doesn't want and/or need in the name of gift-giving. I have two uncles and two cousins who are of age and I got it in my head that I'd give them beer. Who doesn't love beer? I remember seeing a 12-pack called The Twelve Beers of Christmas last year, but of course I couldn't find it on my one afternoon of child-free Christmas shopping, which was all the time I was giving this beer to magic itself into existence.

I did find a 12-pack of Saranac called The Twelve Beers of Winter though. Which leads me to believe that this was the beer formerly known as The Twelve Beers of Christmas and one of two things happened -- Saranac decided to broaden their market reach beyond Christians at Christmas and changed the name OR some atheist filed a complaint that claimed drinking Christmas beer infringed on their freedom or some shit like that. Either way, there is no such thing as The Twelve Beers of Christmas.

Not to be thwarted, I remembered a blog post that my friend Heather wrote last year (which is amazing, because most days I can't even remember if I showered or not) and her creativity totally bailed my ass gift out. Ladies and gentlemen...I present to you a six pack o' reindeer.

Festive, right? Brown pipe cleaners, googly eyes, pompoms, a hot glue gun and a half hour later and ta-da. The beer and the crafts were around $50 (for four six packs), so not bad at all. Hopefully they love them. It's definitely better than a lifetime subscription to the jelly of the month club.