5 Petty Ways People Are Ruining Christmas This Year

5 Weird Futuristic Mall Santa Displays

No matter how much photographic proof you provide parents over many decades, they still insist on exposing their traumatized children to mall Santas.

So, every year you see the traditional setup in the middle of your local mall: Santa, a Christmas tree, and a long line of parents about to spend an ungodly amount of money to sit their kid on a strange man's lap.

This year, one company decided to mix it up a little. Simon Malls owns hundreds of locations around the country, and in six of them they put this:

That is supposed to represent St. Nick under a glacier. While it looks ridiculously cheap, it was far from it; each one cost over $10,000 to make. Their selling point was that they're interactive with sound and light shows. Still, parents hated them. Within a day of one going up in the SouthPark Mall a Change.org petition demanding its removal had 24,000 signatures. Other people declared it another example of the War on Christmas, because if anything says "secular society" it is getting your picture taken with a symbol of a Christian holiday.

The backlash was so bad that the glaciers were immediately taken down, even though in at least one location there was a second Santa who had a more "traditional" setting. Parents were literally too busy complaining to notice they just had to walk a hundred yards to get what they wanted.

4 Reese's Christmas Tree Candy Fail

You would think there can't possibly be a way to screw up Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. It's chocolate and peanut butter, scientifically proven by my mouth to be the most perfect combination of flavors ever. But this year they got into trouble for one aspect of their holiday offerings. The egg-shaped candy for Easter and the pumpkins for Halloween make sense -- you will notice that both of those shapes are just slight variations on circles, which Reese's has perfected in their normal cup shape. So you would think for Christmas they would go with something equally round, like an ornament. Instead they promised us a tree, with pointed branches and everything.

What they delivered was this:

There is no way around it. At best, that looks like a brown butt plug, at worst, a turd. What it does not look like, as thousands of people took to social media to point out, is a tree. Some poor intern over at Hershey's, who probably took the job only for the free candy, was tasked with responding to each complaint with a form-letter-type response. But then they decided to up their game and, in a series of tweets, called all the haters out on their ridiculous beauty standards.

Fortunately, if you are still not convinced, this problem has a very simple solution. Send your defective poo-candy to me, and I promise I will dispose of it humanely.

3 Stores Are Selling Offensive Holiday Clothes

Clothing companies have totally bought into the ironic "ugly sweater" holiday trend. But what about when those sweaters go from visually ugly to morally repugnant?

Shoppers who were willing to overlook Target's use of sweatshop workers were nonetheless appalled to find that the company was stocking a holiday jumper with a questionable slogan.

Actual sufferers of OCD were quick to point out on Twitter that making light of a mental illness 2.2 million Americans live with is kind of a dick move. Target felt so bad that they removed the sweaters from their stores ... but left them for sale online. It's a good thing no one has figured out how to purchase things over the Internet.

For classier bigotry, head over to Nordstrom. They proved that holiday fuck-ups have no religious barriers with their Hanukkah "Chai Maintenance" sweater. In Hebrew, "chai" sounds kinda like "high." HA HA, GET IT, because Jewish women are totally high maintenance? Aren't cultural stereotypes hilarious!

I know what you're thinking: Are we maybe reading too much into this? It's just a play on words; it's not like the sweater says Jewish-American Princess or something.

Except it totally does.

So, yeah, racist.

But even if you would proudly wear both those shirts to your company's holiday party, you have to agree this next one doesn't just cross the line; it doused the line in brandy like a Christmas pudding and lit that bitch on fire. While Bloomingdale's was selling perfectly acceptable clothes in their holiday catalog, they didn't seem to have faith you would look good enough in them to get laid. That's why they gave men the brilliant idea to resort to date rape.

After a huge social media backlash, which pointed out that slipping something in someone's drink is both illegal and immoral, Bloomingdale's tweeted that the ad was "in poor taste." Unlike other ways to encourage date rape, which I guess can be tasteful?

2 Canceled Light Displays

Everyone loves the amazing light displays you see around Christmas. In some cases, too many people love them.

Take the annual Festival of Lights held in a small Florida park. Every year a few hundred people would pay $3 to drive through and see the attraction. Until this year, when 33,197 people on Facebook said they were attending. Nowhere near that many actually came, but there were enough that the surrounding area went into complete gridlock. One local homeowner said it took him two hours to complete his three-mile commute. As a result, the town pulled the plug after just two days.

Meanwhile, in New York City's Little Italy, their annual Christmas tree and light display was also a huge hit with the local shopkeepers. But another segment of the population was attracted to the displays for a different reason. Why homeless people found the merrily lit area a better place to go to the bathroom than the rest of the Bronx we may never know, but they did. In order to keep the homeless from crapping all over the locals' holiday spirit, security was brought in. Unfortunately, paying the security meant there wasn't enough money left for the electricity needed to run the light display (either that or they kept sparking out under a stream of constant urine). So the whole thing came down.

What if you say screw it and give up relying on others for your fancy light shows? This year a new product came on the market where, instead of hanging half a dozen strands of lights on your gutters, knocking the ladder over, and hanging there until someone hears you screaming, you simply take a laser projector and stake it into your yard. Turn it on, and the whole front of your house is covered with snowflakes or stars.

But be sure your aim is perfect. If you overshoot your house even a tiny bit, you could be blinding pilots. This isn't theoretical; one family outside of Dallas was responsible for shining lasers into the eyes of guys trying to fly a plane full of people at 13,000 feet. Forget local party-poopers shutting you down; get your holiday decorations wrong and the FAA could be knocking on your door.

1 Scrooges Are Stealing Holiday Lawn Decorations

It's not only Obama's anti-Christmas brigade you have to worry about coming and taking your fancy new lights; it's petty thieves. There is just something about the holiday season that makes people want to steal shit.

Seriously, even a quick Google search turns up hundreds of local news stories of people who woke up to find their expensive and often time-consuming lawn displays had completely disappeared.

This year those same laser light displays that are searing the corneas of pilots are also lining the pockets of criminals. They aren't that expensive to buy, but they are hard to find, which means people are paying hundreds of dollars for them on eBay. Since the projector is so easy to just unplug and carry away, they are disappearing like crazy. One neighborhood had dozens stolen over one weekend. Another family only had theirs for three days before it was swiped.

A woman in Kentucky hadn't decorated in years since her displays were always stolen, but she gave it another chance this Christmas and purchased the laser lights. Then she woke up one morning and they were gone, so now the only outside decorations she plans on hanging up are surveillance cameras.

One family attempted to guilt-trip the thief into returning the lights, which their 4-year-old son had hoped to turn into a nightlight after Christmas, by posting this sign on their lawn:

It's so bad that you can actually find "How To Keep Your Christmas Decorations From Being Stolen" guides all over. It's harder to find tips on what to do if you're the one taking the stuff in the first place, but I want to fix that. So, your Cracked Christmas Criminal Tip 2015 is this: If you are going to steal a holiday display from your neighbor, don't then put it in your front yard, because they will notice, and you will be put in jail, like this dumbass.

Don't feel overwhelmed by the constant pressure to be jolly this holiday season. There is still plenty of stuff out there to complain about, no matter what time of year. Here's wishing you a Merry Bitch-fest, and Feel Free to Cry a Few Tears!

Kathy wrote a very funny book called FUNERALS TO DIE FOR, and it makes a great last-minute gift idea. Or follow her on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Another year, another B.S. controversy. See how the media made Disney out to be real Grinches in 5 More B.S. Viral Stories That All Your Friends Believed, and find out why you should be wary of T.G.I. Friday's this Christmas in The 6 Biggest Christmas F#@%-Ups Of 2014.

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