An Eggplant Holiday Survival Guide: How to Decorate the Apartment Without Setting Off Your Straight Roommates
For many, the first few days of December is a giant, jingle-jangled kickoff to celebrating the holiday season. These lucky folks take the school year’s remaining fourteen days left to “Pinterest It Up!” and drape customized, yet highly flammable, stockings right above your stove while blasting Mariah Carey’s "All I Want For Christmas Is You," honoring the true skinny legend of the holiday season instead of that rat bastard Santa Clause. While it's now socially acceptable to be jolly and merry, it's absolutely the-fuck-not for those who don't throw themselves into this 25-day long holiday bash. Here are a few tips from an Eggplant Staffer to help ensure your straight roommates don’t keep the lone gays from bustin’ out those ugly sweaters and holiday cheer:
The Princess Switch but with decorations!
Take a sleigh ride (or Honda Civic) to the nearest Target clearance section and fill that basket up with all the festive tchotchkes your heart desires! You're going to stuff the tinsels in the couch, the reefs in the oven and switch the living room into a real-life snow globe as soon as your roommates are out watching the fourth season of Friends for the ninth time! Your living room can become a winter wonderland faster than you can say “Ho-Ho-How did I re-sign with these Scrooge-losers?” Okay, we haven’t seen The Princess Switch, but how different can it be?
2. The Ole “It’s For My Baby Bio Lab Experiment”
We’ve all heard the classic line, “Why buy a Christmas tree when it’s just going to die?” If you survived the longest eye roll you’ve ever given after hearing this, then you deserve to smell the sweet scent of Christmas evergreen in the privacy of your own apartment. Buy that baby and plop it down wherever you please because we’ve got just the excuse for you: it’s just a windowsill succulent for your lab! Even the most un-jolly of roommate can resist this tricked-out tree after inhaling its enchanting aroma, which is most definitely better than the smell of m*rijuana that mysteriously wafts from his room every time his dad direct-deposits him another $40 for food.
3. Candles, Candles, Candles… And More Candles
The sense of smell has no sexual orientation, although most candles undoubtedly fuck around on the Kinsey scale like nobody’s business. Whether on the naughty or nice list, you appreciate a good candle. Instead of stuffing the living room with dollar store crapola, decorate your space with the scent of gingerbread and sugar cookies, Christmas trees and roasting fires. It’s not like the fire alarm even works in your $500 per month apartment, so light as many miniature fires as you need to reach your festive zen. To avoid any objections, strategically place the candles where only the queer eye can see.
4. Joy, Love, Peace and... Football?
In the end, the holidays are about love if nothing else! At least that’s what I tell myself every holiday season when I find myself crying alone to my fifth re-watching of Love Actually. Incorporate that pesky roommate’s love and maybe, just maybe, you can reach what the straights call “a dub.” Buy stockings sporting their favorite football teams and shove "pigskin" scented deodorant inside! But pin your Sweetener-inspired stocking upside down right next to theirs to remind them what kind of home this really is. Purchase those holiday throw pillows you’ve been itching to get but add in a football plush! Your roommates will admire the effort. If all else fails, get ‘em loaded on eggnog vodka and take their asses to HomeGoods.