THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES

My holidays are filled with Holiday Towels.

Hand towels. Beach towels. Bath towels. Fuzzy towels. Threadbare towels. All shapes and sizes, towels, towels, towels. A bunch of Holiday Towels.

Towels hanging off the kitchen faucet. Towels hanging off the oven door handle. Towels hanging off this towel rack in the bathroom. Towels in the laundry basket upstairs. Towels in the laundry basket downstairs. Towels in the washing machine. Towels in the dryer. Towels on the towel storage rack. Towels on hooks. Towels in storage bins. Towels on the shelf downstairs.

If you need a Holiday Towel let me know.

We even have Halloween Towels.

Skeleton towels (white on black). Jack-o-Lantern towels (orange on black). Ghost towels (white on black again).

Thanksgiving gets skipped. What a decorating rip-off Thanksgiving is. I don’t think there’s even such a thing as Thanksgiving Towels.

Then of course along comes the most towel-friendly time of year: Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Boxing Day. Of which my household celebrates Christmas, e.g. Capitol One’s Favorite Time of Year.

Snowman towels (white on green). Red Santa towels (basically red on white). Christmas tree towels (green on red).

So on and so forth.

All these Holiday Towels are very festive. You should try decorating with towels, especially if you have kids because decorating makes you look like an involved parent concerned with their well-being and stuff, or even if you don’t have kids because it makes it look like you’re a generally good-humored, celebratory person without any problems and a complete handle on life because who else but someone with Total Confidence and Control has the time to put up a bunch of themed towels?

Either way, once you’ve plastered your home with these towels make sure you take the opportunity to look in the mirror and say “Wow, this place looks great, and damn don’t you look good today” while giving yourself that famous knowing smile and even an encouraging wink if you’re feeling coy – because that’s what the holidays are all about.

There is one slight problem with Holiday Towels. You can’t actually use them to dry anything.

I know it sounds counterintuitive. Like having a formal dining set, fake plants, or a third-party candidate. But it’s true.

In fact, if you even think about reaching for one of your Holiday Towels to dry your hands/a dish/the dog, the Holiday Towel Police You Live With will appear as if from nowhere to present you with a Cease & Desist, usually in the form of angry yelling.

Furthermore, you also can’t leave out regular, non-themed towels next to your Holiday Towels to solve for the issue of daily wetness because apparently this just ruins everything on a visual level while diminishing the thousands of hours of hard work behind obtaining/storing/putting out the Holiday Towels in the first place. How dare you.

So you’re just going to have to figure out a different way to dry things. Our cave-people ancestors somehow did it, so can you. Maybe try fire.

Just remember – it’s all worth it for the sake of the holidays. They’ll be gone before you know it, so celebrate down to the finest detail, take the time to revel in the beauty of your now fabric-rich surroundings, and perhaps think about buying me something, just not a towel.