The Luv Doc: Sacrifice

Dear Luv Doc,

For the last five years, my boyfriend and I have gone our separate ways for Christmas – he to his family in Plano and me to mine in Pearland. No big deal. Everyone was happy. I got to hang out with old high school friends and spend Christmas hunkered down with the family drinking wine and playing board games. He got to play golf with his dad and brother and visit his grandparents. All good, except we got married in June and now we're fighting about who we're spending Christmas with and how much time we are going to spend because it's a short holiday. I would like to go one place or the other – preferably Pearland – and he wants to try to do both. I also suggested we go our separate ways like last year and he got all butt-hurt. So, what is your suggestion? Do we try to do the Texas whirlwind tour or do we have a peaceful, relaxing (but short) time off?

– Blitzen

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I think it's wonderful that you and your husband got around to discussing this right before Christmas. Truthfully, nothing could be more Christian than trying to decide where to spend the night on Christmas Eve – unless it's maybe getting crucified. I think that if Mary knew that giving birth to Jesus in a manger meant that a couple thousand years later people would end up staying in run-down Super 8s off the interstate to avoid fighting with their in-laws, she would have outed the Almighty as a rapist just like Harvey Weinstein. #Hetoo. Of course, in biblical times that would have meant that she would have been stoned to death by a bunch of dudes who looked like Mohawk bartenders in tunics, but I feel like if Mary truly understood the hell of staying in a Super 8, she would have leaned over the plate, so to speak.

Besides trying to score a decent room on Christmas Eve, the other thing at the heart of Christianity is sacrifice. Think about it. God could have chosen a mother of seven whose birth canal was a veritable Slip 'N Slide to give birth to the baby Jesus – someone who would barely even notice the placenta dropping out, but no, he wanted a sacrifice, and in this case the sacrifice was Mary's perineum. I mean God literally forbid her vajajay have the pleasure of getting torn up by some actual D, but he had no problem blowing it up with his firstborn's cranium. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

I know you two lovebirds might not even celebrate the Jesus Christmas. You might totally be Santa Christmas people, but that doesn't mean you aren't going to have to sacrifice like Mary and her big-headed infant. One of you – maybe even both of you – is going to have to lean over the plate and take one for the team. If I were you, I would seize the moral high ground and make the first sacrifice. Keep in mind I would never say this under any other circumstances but, go to Plano. That's the kind of thing you can hang over your husband's head all the way to the divorce proceedings. As Jesus Himself would tell you: There is great power in martyrdom. Compromise is pretty good too, but as the mostly forgotten Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz said, "A tie is like kissing your sister."