Christmas Eve is a particularly holy night for my family. An Austrian priest, Joseph Mohr, penned a poem exploiting my family’s tradition of the “Silent Night.” As the title suggests, no one is allowed to speak or make any noise, without facing the bitter taste of the switch. The satisfaction we all got when someone accidentally spoke and was switched is still one of the greatest memories of my childhood.

Our Christmas day traditions are pretty mainstream. We wake up early to exchange small, handmade wooden presents and to slaughter our dinner—the Christmas goat. And of course, if a Schrute has been particularly good that year, then Kris Von Kindl fills his stockings with coal, a highly desired source of fuel during long, cold Pennsylvania winters.

And since our Christmas festivities are so much fun, we carry them on for another day, which we call, “Boxing Day.” In between feasting and personal meditation, the day is spent engaging in fierce hand-to-hand combat with our loved ones. Unresolved familial issues that have crept up over the course of the year get settled once and for.

Thus, after three gruelingly delightful days spent internalizing the Christmas virtues (love, obedience, and endurance), our family is ready to ring in the New Year with the true Christmas spirit etched into the musculature of our hearts.

May you and yours have the best of battles this holiday season,

Dwight K. Schrute.

We were completing our weekly militia training (which we see as fulfilling an American duty) in the woods. While doing our usual rife drills, I instinctively missed the target (a scarecrow dressed as Sean Penn). My bullet ricocheted off a tree in the woods with an alarming “ding.” In an instant Mose and I were on the ground with our rifles pointed. We cautiously crawled toward the tree for inspection. It looked like this:

Initially we thought it was a camouflaged nuclear anthrax rocket, or anthrax rocket with a conventional warhead, or, perhaps, most disturbingly, an actual metal tree. But after hours of poking it with a stick and throwing rocks at it, it became obvious that it was a device used to spy on me. Clearly the work of the Russians, Russian Separatists, Al Qaeda, Jim, We Got the Beets (a rival beet supplier), or some combination thereof.

Ever since I checked out Harriet the Spy from the library for Mose, I’ve suspected that I was under surveillance. After dark, Mose and I crept into the woods and took down the tree. Breaking through the surrounding wires and cement was not an easy task, in part because Mose digs with his hands and teeth.

The following day, the police blotter of the local paper listed a report that someone had vandalized an artificial tree that served as a cellular phone company antenna. Since wireless providers have 128,000 antennas made to look like trees across the country, this seemed plausible. A little too plausible if you ask me. Thus further investigation will continue.

My swimming lessons were simultaneously extensive and short-lived. I was eight years old, which is the age all Schrutes begin their aqua-training. From the very moment I was thrown into the center of the swimming hole, I knew that I was not meant to be a swimmer. As with all things for Schrute children, however, I had no choice in the matter. My father took on the role of swim instructor and began teaching me. I hated every second of it except for the fact that it was the first occasion I had ever spent time alone with Father.

We are in the thick of summer, people. The sun, while a huge ally of the Earth, also serves as one of our biggest enemies. It provides light that we use to see, but it can also scorch your skin into a red blistering mess. There are so many heat-related illnesses that it’s almost impossible to name them all: heatstroke, heat rash, heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heat edema, heat tetany, heat syncope, heat mumps. The list goes on and on. The sun lurks silently in the sky, waiting to claim its next human victim and it’s up to us to stop it.

In the wintertime, nobody bothers to care about the sun at all. That’s because it’s busy resting. Just like bears, the sun hibernates in the sky during the winter. Sure, it still provides sunshine – but just enough to get us through the day. When the sun wakes up, usually around mid-April, it begins a program of solar destruction that takes so many lives each year that it should be at the top of every Most Wanted list in the world.

I feel that it is my duty to combat the sun’s evil efforts by providing you with this list of helpful sun-fighting tips.

There is a topic I’ve been meaning to bring up and this appears to be the appropriate time. I have noticed many more people taking photographs of things now that the true start of summer is nearly upon us. Photography is an “art” that I do not endorse. If you’d like to see how something looks, go see it with your own eyes. If you want to see a representation of something, then go look at a drawing or painting. Grandma Mannheim was especially adept at illustrating Strullpeter stories, so don’t try and tell me that photographs are better than drawings. Photographs merely replicate the human visual experience as a frozen moment in time and that insults the eyes and the memory.

When I was a tyke, my family did not have a camera. The general belief was that if a camera were introduced into our lives, our eyes would revolt, leaving us all blind and unable to operate our farm. Now that I’m an adult, I realize that this is unlikely. The eyes are very rational and I think they would adjust to sharing their optical duties with a camera, if a person chose to use such a device. I, however, still refuse to use a camera out of pure ocular respect.

This language will not take the place of conversation between people you know and trust. It will merely be used for the casual daily interactions with strangers that can become so difficult when words are introduced. If I sneeze, I don’t need to have a conversation about it. Thank you for your blessings, but please stop wasting my time. Also, it’s more polite to say gesundheit. My new language will take the place of these time-wasters and bring interpersonal communication back to its purest form.

What good is a freshly grilled steak to me if I’m not sitting at a table? If I’m hiding in an elevated perch during a paintball battle, that steak becomes nothing less than a burden. When combatants from the other squad smell the steak, it could lead them right to me. If the steak sits out too long in the sun, there’s a strong likelihood that it will turn rancid. Shortly after that point it becomes a silent but deadly killer waiting for my hunger to unwittingly lead me into the meat’s treacherous clutches. “Traditional Meat Cookers” would probably want that to happen to me. They would like to see me die. Well guess what, enemies? Dehydrated meat leaves me vulnerable to NONE of the situations I described previously. It can be eaten discreetly and in any location. It is delicious without being messy. Best of all, it is highly nutritious.

Additionally, the guests that we have hosted have not treated our belongings with the respect that we Schrutes give to our possessions. The night table constructed by my Great Uncle Gernot has been chipped and scratched as if it were a common scratching post. My familiar dining table has had beet jelly spilled upon it several times and, as everyone knows, beet jelly leaves stains that are entirely irremovable. After discussing the situation with various co-workers, it was suggested that I visit the massive furniture store run by Swedish people (In an effort to not slander nor promote any corporations in this weblog, I will refrain from naming with Swedish furniture store I patronized. Let’s just say that it was a bad “IDEA” that I shopped there).

For those of you who remain: welcome. You’re among decent spellers. It feels good to get rid of the poor-spelling moon-faces. Good riddance.

Resourcefulnacht is both a holiday and a small series of challenges for children. You can think of it as a dinner theatre with the theatre element being replaced by a string of events that include: knot-tying, beet loading and unloading, hand-to-hand combat using common household cleaning items, juggling, and a cooking challenge not unlike television’s “Top Chef” program*. In my teenage years, I was the knot-tying champion of Resourcefulnacht six years in a row. It remains one of my proudest achievements and also led to my inheritance of Schrute Farms.

The full moon is also the time when the mythical lycanthrope, or “werewolf,” emerges. I do not believe in lycanthropes. I put no credence in the theory that a human can change into anything other than a decomposing human. Some of my relatives, however, fully trust that lycanthropes exist. Some have even claimed that they have seen them with their own eyes. They are obviously liars. They would have been devoured and unable to report the sighting. They also say that lycanthropes are especially attracted to Schrute Farm. False. The claw marks that we find the morning after full moons are from real wolves that enjoy the bounty of our farm. They are not from werewolves, no matter what you may have heard. Please do not let these rumors keep you away from the farm – it is beautiful this time of year. If you are seriously concerned, merely stay away from Schrute Farm during the full moon period and return as soon as the lunar cycle has advanced.