Canonical Holiday

.TH holiday humor \n(mo/\n(dy/\n(yr "Holiday Humor"
.ce
H O L I D A Y   H U M O R
.po 0
.in 0i
.nf
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Canonical List Of Holiday Humor  (Ho Ho Ho)

Archive-Name: holiday      [plain text version]
              holiday.html [HTML Web version]
Last-Modified: 95/03/01
Version: 3.01
Total-Joke-Count:   300

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   Many thanks to the following contributors since the last version:
lks@bethany.org (The Joker), rbrown@vaxa.stevens-tech.edu (Richard M. Brown),
Kathleen_McCaffrey@qm.sri.com (RS_Helper), lynnb@aimnet.com (Lynn Benson),
rcarr@prairienet.org (Robert T. Carr), eboshove@vagus.vth.colostate.edu
(ericwilliam boshoven), gt5436e@prism.gatech.edu (John Andrew Kirkwood), dutch@
rangerbbs.com (Dutch)


CONTENTS
   APRIL FOOL'S DAY
   CHRISTMAS
   EASTER
   HALLOWEEN
   THANKSGIVING
   VALENTINE'S DAY


================================================================================
== APRIL FOOL'S DAY ============================================================
-= april fool's day =-=    1 =--------------------------------------------------

Take the top off the standard sugar dispenser found at restaurants.  Place a
single layer of paper napkin over the opening in the glass part, then put salt
on top of that.  Put the top back on and tear off all the paper showing around
the edges.  The first victim gets salt in his coffee, which I suppose is funny
to some people.  But what is even funnier is this same guy, or the next, trying
to get sugar out of the thing.  They think the sugar may be caked and bang the
dispenser on the table, shake it, hold it up to the light and squint at it, etc.

-= april fool's day =-=    2 =--------------------------------------------------

Years ago, before all the young studs started taking their dates to motels for,
er, recreation, there were always Lover's Lanes around.  On a typical moonlit
night, there might be a dozen cars at one of these places with the windows all
steamed up from the activities within, and occasional flashes of red as flailing
feet inadvertently hit brake pedals.  Some people I knew used to get their kicks
by chaining the bumpers or axles of these cars to the nearest fence or tree.

   The most elaborate joke along these lines was played by three friends, whom
we'll call Tom, Dick, and Harry.  On a moonlit night as described above, Tom
came running out of the woods onto the Lover's Lane screaming, "No! No! Oh, God,
Please NO!"
   When Tom had everybody's attention, Dick stepped out of the woods with a
shotgun, yelled, "Now I'll get you, you bastard!" and fired the gun over Tom's
head.  Tom dropped to the ground and lay there writhing and screaming until Dick
came over and fired a blast into the ground near his head, then went limp and
quiet.
   Then Harry came rushing over, yelling, "Jesus, Jack, why'd you DO it?  He was
our FRIEND!  Oh, my God!" and the like.  Then both Dick and Harry grabbed Tom by
the heels and dragged him back to the woods.  When they were out of sight, Tom
got up and all three enjoyed the activity back at the scene of the "crime" which
needless to say had changed considerably from a few minutes before.

-= april fool's day =-=    3 =--------------------------------------------------

At Burroughs Corp., a couple of co-workers got into a get-even contest with each
others' toolboxes, including such niceties as:

   Filling toolbox with punched-card chad.
   Same as above, then pouring oil over everything! [[yuck]]
   Wiring toolbox to 110 VAC. (I'm not endorsing these activities; simply
including them for sake of completeness!!)
   Supergluing handle to top of toolbox.  (Thought that one up myself.)
   Removing tools; bolting toolbox to floor; replacing tools.  (Good one!!)

-= april fool's day =-=    4 =--------------------------------------------------

Saran wrap on reading glasses that have been left on desk is good.  Trimming at
edge of lens is hard but effect is great.  Not usually noticed when first picked
up but optical quality of Saran is spectacularly bad.

-= april fool's day =-=    5 =--------------------------------------------------

Put shaving cream on a phone receiver and then call the person.  The person
would then answer the phone and sploosh the shaving cream into his ear.

-= april fool's day =-=    6 =--------------------------------------------------

Here is a simple, but fun, April Fool's joke:

You need a phone with a handset so that you can unscrew the mouthpiece and
remove the pickup.  It's real easy, they are just sitting in there and not wired
down.  Replace the mouthpiece and think up a good excuse to get someone to use
the phone.  This joke was done to me when I was in college.  My roommate told me
that this girl who I thought was cute had called, and that she wanted me to call
back.  I felt pretty stupid yelling into the phone trying to talk to her.  And
all I heard was her say, "Hello, hello, is anyone there, hello?"  After I
realized what had happened, we went out, and tried it on some other friends,
with similar results.  It's a good joke because it is totally harmless, and even
more fun after a few drinks.

-= april fool's day =-=    7 =--------------------------------------------------

Someone once was on a flight and brought along a can of chunky beef stew onboard
the plane.  At some point, he empty the contents into the barf bag.  Later,
during some minor turbulence, he pantomimed using the bag in the conventional
way.  When the flight attendant asked if she could dispose of the bag for him,
he replied, "Not yet, there are some choice bits that I haven't finished with
yet," and proceeded to pick out chunks from the bag and eat them.  According to
the guy, everyone nearby nearly tossed their cookies.

-= april fool's day =-=    8 =--------------------------------------------------

Seven friends once pulled this at a college cafeteria.  One put a hot water
bottle filled with pea soup down his chest; he sat at the head of a table, with
the other six friends sitting along the sides.  When the cafeteria was pretty
full of people, he made a loud noise to attract attention, stood up, bent over,
and squeezed his chest. This caused a huge gush of green liquid to spew all over
the table; the other six immediately began to eat this green liquid.  I think a
lot of food went uneaten that night.

-= april fool's day =-=    9 =--------------------------------------------------

Another good practical joke taken from the "Tippy Turtle" series on Saturday
Night Live is as follows:

Take one of those musical greeting cards (the type that play a song when opened)
and carefully rip out the part that actually plays the music. This is only about
the size of a quarter. When the person isn't watching, plant this somewhere near
him/her. Since it is so small, it is relatively easy to hide in a pocket, purse,
etc.  Afterwards, watch the person become maddened by the recurrence of Jingle
Bells, Happy Birthday, etc. in the background.  I was a victim of this one and,
at first, I thought I was hearing the muzak at the restaurant I was eating at. 
After I was done, I returned to my car and the music followed me.  I thought I
was going insane.

-= april fool's day =-=   10 =--------------------------------------------------

While the victim is asleep, carefully put Vaseline between his/her toes.  What
you will observe is the person's toes starting to wiggle. The apparent mechanism
is that when your toes start slipping against each other, your mind insists on
making them slip and slide more and more.  The upshot of this is that the part
of the mind that's supposed to be getting rest is busy moving toes.  The victim
wakes up having had no sleep at all.

-= april fool's day =-=   11 =--------------------------------------------------

Switch the "Men" and "Women" signs on a pair of public bathrooms while they're
occupied.  Great at airports, hotels, and bars.

-= april fool's day =-=   12 =--------------------------------------------------

Get one of those dolls that cries unless you rock it back and forth.  Fasten it
to the bottom of someone's chair.  The person comes and sits down, and starts
working on his terminal.  As he gets into it, this vague "wa-wa" noise starts up
from some unidentifiable direction.  The guy looks around (moving the chair) and
the crying stops.  Oh, well, who cares.  Back to work.  A little later, the
crying starts up again.  This one was good for several minutes.

-= april fool's day =-=   13 =--------------------------------------------------

One telephone gag is to call someone and, with an official tone, rattle off this
warning before they can interrupt:

"This is the telephone company calling.  There is some trouble with your line. 
Please do not answer any calls for the next five minutes or the person on the
other end may be electrocuted.  Thank you."

Hang up, and wait about two minutes.  Call them back.  When they answer, just
scream "AAAAAARGH!!!" and hang up.

-= april fool's day =-=   14 =--------------------------------------------------

Put a few tablespoons of methylene blue in a coke/coffee/dark-colored drink. The
next time the person has to use the restroom, surprise!  Blue urine.

-= april fool's day =-=   15 =--------------------------------------------------

It seems that a psychology class decided to give their new-found knowledge of
the "power of suggestion" a little test.  Some of the students had another class
together and decided to play a little trick on their teacher.  Whenever the
teacher was on the left side of the room, they would act really interested and
when he was on the right side of the room, they would act really bored.  Well,
it seems that this behavior did its job on the teachers subconscious and he was
practically crawling on the left wall by the end of class.

-= april fool's day =-=   16 =--------------------------------------------------

It is common for draftsmen to sprinkle Scumex (powdered rubber eraser) on
tracings prior to doing any drawing on it.  This reduces smearing of the pencil
marks and such and results in a cleaner tracing.

At a former employer, we had replaced the Scumex at one draftsmans desk with
dried parmesan cheese.  It looked about the same.  It was extremely interesting
watching him draw for a while and then begin to smell the paper.  Took the poor
guy almost 10 minutes to guess that he had been fooled!

-= april fool's day =-=   17 =--------------------------------------------------

A friend who manages a large retail store gave me an electronic bird call used
to add "realism" to store displays.  This device was about 4 inches in diameter
and 2 inches high, with a speaker on the top.  It was powered by a 9-volt
battery and had two controls: a 5-position "voice" selector, and a time delay
control to set the interval between calls (up to 60 seconds). For a device which
used just electronics, the bird calls were amazingly realistic, especially if
the time interval was long between calls.  I have had much fun with this gadget,
especially planting it in people's houses (basement and garages are good
places).  The unsuspecting people really believe that there is a bird trapped in
their house, and go ape trying to find it. If anyone wants one of these devices,
they can be purchased from companies which sell retail store display fixtures; I
don't believe they cost much money.

-= april fool's day =-=   18 =--------------------------------------------------

When you have a few friends around, take turns calling the same phone number, an
acquaintance that won't recognize your voices is always a good choice.  When the
person answers, try to leave a message for John Smith (or any name that sounds
real). Insist that you have the right number and even read their number to them.
Have a bit of fun here and stretch this on as long as possible.  Repeat several
times, once or twice an hour.  Let everybody have a turn at calling. After about
four hours, call one last time.  Tell the poor soul answering the phone that you
are John Smith, and ask, "Are there any messages for me?"  This is sure to get a
groan.

-= april fool's day =-=   19 =--------------------------------------------------

Reverse the horizontal yoke leads on terminals (so the text comes out backwards
from right to left).  This works best on a software team who thinks they have
just released the firmware for screen drivers.  Besides, hardware people figure
it out too quickly.

-= april fool's day =-=   20 =--------------------------------------------------

This is one that a someone did to his mom.  This kid was going somewhere with
his mom in the car.  The kid was in the back seat and the mom was driving.  It
was summer time, so the kid had the window rolled down.  Anyway, the kid see's
this jogger comming up the side of the road, so he starts motioning to the
jogger.  The jogger didn't really know what was going on, but just as the car
passed the jogger, the kid reached out of the window, and whacked the side of
the car rather loudly with his hand.  The jogger, getting the idea, dove in the
ditch and acted like he was in great pain (similar to the pain he would feel,
say if he just got hit by a car).  The mother obviously notices the loud noise
and see's the dying jogger in the ditch, slams on the breaks to see if this poor
guy is dead or not.  Naturally she is worried sick.

-= april fool's day =-=   21 =--------------------------------------------------

Carefully pick up sleeping targets bed and set it on four coke bottles.  When
target rolls over or makes any significant move bed will crash 6 inches to the
floor and there will be bottles rolling all over the place but not a soul in
sight.

-= april fool's day =-=   22 =--------------------------------------------------

If your brother or sister has a hamster or turtle or other caged pet, go to the
pet store and buy another pet of the similar species, but markedly different in
appearance, either due to size, color, etc.  Then switch pets and hide the
original pet somewhere else.  (You might want to make sure the replacement gag
pet you get is returnable to the pet store unless you or the brother/sister end
up keeping it.)

-= april fool's day =-=   23 =--------------------------------------------------

Some pranks good for a few chuckles with a new UNIX user is, while they're away
from the terminal, put a few cute aliases in their .profile, .login, whatever,
for example:

alias ls  echo 'ls:  command not found.'
alias vi  ed

-= april fool's day =-=   24 =--------------------------------------------------

Connect the secretary's electric typewriter to a variac (can vary the line
voltage).  At about 40-50 volts (out of the 110), the little ball makes three or
four jerky attempts before finally striking a faint imprint.  Fairly pathetic
looking, actually.

-= april fool's day =-=   25 =--------------------------------------------------

There's also the standard Saran Wrap across women's toilets or Karo syrup and
flour in the shower.  Or butter up the toilet seats and doorknobs.

-= april fool's day =-=   26 =--------------------------------------------------

One day, when someone was logged in at a terminal and had left for a few minutes
to go collect output from the printer, a friend leapt into action and changed
his prompt from '$' to 'Login incorrect.  Login:'.  Then he logged the person
off.  He told the guy that the system had logged him off because he'd been gone
to long.  Needless to say, when the guy logged on again, the system appeared to
be telling him that he logged on incorrectly.  The guy was a first-year student,
was thoroughly unfamiliar with UNIX, and became very confused.

-= april fool's day =-=   27 =--------------------------------------------------

]NEW[

From: lks@bethany.org (The Joker)

   Every year on April Fool's day, I try to fool my wife.  The first few years
it was pretty easy 'cuz she wasn't used to that kind of stuff.  Now it is
difficult and I win about half the time.  She said I am in trouble because she
will be away on April 1.  She is chaperoning a bunch of kids to Florida or
something like that.
   One year, I set all of the clocks ahead an hour when I left for work so she
showed up an hour early.  Another year, I used a cellular phone to call her from
outside our house and said I would be late from work and so on.

From: rbrown@vaxa.stevens-tech.edu (Richard M. Brown)

   If they are all flying to Florida, get a friend of yours to call saying you
are from United Airlines (or whoever they are flying) and that her return flight
was cancelled and come up with some lame reason that they can't return for
another week or so.

From: lynnb@aimnet.com (Lynn Benson)

   Don't know if this would work since your wife will be out of town (you might
need an accomplice), but here's the best one I ever pulled off:
   I had a teacher in fifth grade who was *addicted* to Diet Coke.  So one day,
I brought a Diet Coke in and set it on her desk.  After much hemming and hawing
on her part, she opened it up and took a big swig. 
   Imagine her surprise when she realized that the Diet Coke was actually half
Diet Coke and half Soy Sauce.
   Before that incident, I had never actually seen a person turn green before.

-= april fool's day =-=   28 =--------------------------------------------------

]NEW[

From: Kathleen_McCaffrey@qm.sri.com (RS_Helper)

   One year, I called my husband at his office and said, "So, you made sure to
file our tax return today, right?"
   He said, "No, not for two more weeks."
   I put just the right tone of anxiety and frustration into my voice (the same
tone he is so used to hearing me use when something has gone wrong.)  I asked
him, "Didn't you see those instructions in the tax forms?  You have to file two
weeks early if you've had a new deduction in the past year!  If we don't get it
in by midnight tonight we won't get our refund!"  (We had just had a baby the
year before.)
   I had him going for about ten seconds.  He sounded really scared until the
light bulb went on and he asked hopefully, "April fools?"
   It's pretty hard for me to fool anyone, since I am a lousy liar, so I
considered this a real triumph.

-= april fool's day =-=   29 =--------------------------------------------------

]NEW[

From: rcarr@prairienet.org (Robert T. Carr)

The best April Fool's Day joke I ever played was on my kids when they were
little.  I went to my kid's bedrooms, took them out of their beds, and put them
in one of the other's beds. None of them woke up while I was doing it!  The next
morning, none of them could figure out what they were doing in each other's bed.

-= april fool's day =-=   30 =--------------------------------------------------

]NEW[

From: eboshove@vagus.vth.colostate.edu (ericwilliam boshoven)

My roommates got me last year by using scotch tape on the spray hose on the
kitchen sink.  Just tape the lever down and leave it in the holder.  When they
turn the water on, they will get soaked.

-= april fool's day =-=   31 =--------------------------------------------------

]NEW[

From: gt5436e@prism.gatech.edu (John Andrew Kirkwood)

A good April Fools joke for the kids:

Tell them that they will be going to Walt Disney World.  Drive them to a trash
dump site where they are burning the trash off and tell your kids that WDW has
burnt to the ground.

-= april fool's day =-=   32 =--------------------------------------------------

]NEW[

From: dutch@rangerbbs.com (Dutch) writes:

This is neither outrageously funny nor original (I copped it from a Tom
Hanks/Jackie Gleason movie) but it's become a tradition with me.  The funny part
is bagging the same people year after year!

On the morning of April 1 I change my voice mail message to:

"Hello. (pause)  Hello?  (pause)  Hello!  Listen, can you speak up I can just
*barely* hear you!  (pause)  What?!?!  Louder please! (pause)  Ha!  April Fools,
this is my voice mail.  Leave a message at the tone and I'll get back to you as
soon as I'm able."


================================================================================
== CHRISTMAS ===================================================================
-= christmas =-=    1 =---------------------------------------------------------

Ways To Say "Merry Christmas / Happy New Year"

Translation in (...), pronunciation tips in [...], other notes in [...]

Afrikaans    Geseende Kersfees en 'n voorspoedige nuwe jaar.
Australian   'ave a bonza Christy an' a beaut New Year, mate!
Canadian     Happy Holidays, eh! (and no socks this year, hosehead!)
Chinese      Sing dan fae lok, gung hai fat choi  [Cantonese]
             Shen dan kuai le xin nian yu kuai    [Mandarin]
Czech        Vesele' va'noce a s~t~astny' novy' rok!
Danish       God jul og godt nyter
             God jul og godt nytaar    [pre-1948 Danish]
Dutch        Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een gelukkig nieuwjaar
English      Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
             Have a Merry Happy!
Esperanto    Gajan Kristnaskon kaj Felican Novan Jaron
Finnish      Hauskaa joulua ja onnellista uutta vuotta!
French       Joyeux Noel et Bonne Annee
German       Froehliche Weihnachten und ein glueckliches Neues Jahr
             Frohe Weihnachten und ein Gutes Neues Jahr
Greek        Xronia Polla              ['X' is Greek X pronounced as sharp 'h']
Guarani      Navidad Ara Pora
Hawaiian     Mele Kalikimaka
             Mele Kalikimaka nui loa!
Hebrew       L'shana Tova              (To a good year)
             Chag Sameach              (Happy Holiday)
Hungarian    Kellemes kara'csonyi u"nnepeket e's boldog u'j e'vet
Icelandic    Gle[eth]ileg jol gott og fars