Nik: Every Thanksgiving my family watches Christmas movies while we work through the turkey coma. It’s always the same… Christmas Vacation, Elf, A Christmas Story.  Each year, I notice something new; usually in Christmas Vacation (btw, I live for Chevy Chase’s monologue at the end), but this year I learned something deeply profound from Elf. My sister and I were sifting through the Black Friday deals in the newspaper while simultaneously bashing the hordes of morons who actually shop on that day (us included–it’s a love/hate affair) and while we were sifting, Mary Steenburgen’s character asked Buddy how he slept and he responded with, “Great! I got a full 40 minutes!” My sister and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. I mean can you imagine if I was that excited about getting only 40 minutes of sleep? My sister said that’s what makes the movie so funny–Buddy sees everything as positive and expresses himself in an overtly excited way even in a negative situation. That’s the genius of it. I told my sister that we should try saying everything like Buddy–specifically if it was something we were complaining about. The challenge was real. We both discovered how negative we were. We ventured out on Black Friday and it was cold. And busy. And did I say really cold? At one point I said, “I’m freezing my ass off.” My sister corrected me and said, “You mean… I’m freezing my ass off!!!” She didn’t change the words, she just changed the attitude behind them. Instead of my sourpuss and snark, she said it like Buddy would’ve, with a huge smile and loads of excitement, and the freezing cold suddenly became very funny. We did it for the rest of my vacation. Not only did we become aware of our attitudes and how much we were complaining, but we actually stopped complaining all together because when we did, we sounded so ridiculous. There you go. Wisdom from Elf.
Alex: MY BACK REALLY HURTS! It’s SUPER! You’re right, it’s kind of fun. No one likes a cotton-headed ninnymuggins.
Nik: Right?!
Alex: Super right!
Nik: Double thumbs up!
Alex: High five!
Nik: Fist bump!
Alex: Chest bump!
Nik: Whoa.
Alex: You mean WHOA!