Trentmas is just around the corner!

That's right folks, there's only two skulking days until Trentmas, the annual celebration of Trent Troop going on vacation. Now, being raised as unwashed heathens you may not know about Trentmas, but I'm going to lay out the basics for you.

When is Trentmas?
Trentmas comes but once a year, except when it doesn't. The exact date and length of the celebration varies, being based upon the largely unused Buscemiean Calender that the Catholic Church deemed irredeemably non-linear in 543 AD. The exact method to calculating the Trentmas season requires the combined efforts of forty blind monks using a single, triple-sized abacus. Thanks to the miracle of numerology, the one pure pseudoscience, the length and location of Trentmas on the calender coincides with a number of factors, primarily the variable rates of hotel costs and the schedule of a giant transforming robot convention. These coincidences prove the sacred nature of this wondrous holiday.

Where is Trentmas?
This year, Trentmas is a 16 day festival involving a pilgrimage to Pasedena, California. In previous years it has been in Cinninati, Providence, Frisco, St. Louis, and so forth in that fashion back through history. The pattern is obvious, and the next location can easily be deduced, provided one has forty blind monks and a giant abicus.

But I'm not going to Pasedena! Does that mean I can't celebrate Trentmas?
Of course not! In fact, there are only two possible positions on Trentmas... you're either celebrating, or you're part of the War on Trentmas. You don't want to be a member of an unpopular outsider group that is routinely accused of attempting to tear down a ritualistic celebration out of a sense of obligation to rationality, facts and fair play, do you? Of course not. So get ready to party like it's 1859!

What are the Trentmas traditions?
The major traditions of Trentmas are:

1) Going to a giant robot convention, and experiencing fellowship and shared interests with Trent and his many awesome friends.
2) Buying gifts for oneself. Typically, these gifts are robots or mind-shatteringly obscure bits of 80s and/or Japanese merchandise. Liberal sects also purchase self-gifts of booze, video games, exotic foreign confections and miniature toiletries.
3) Not engaging in the drudgery of a day job.
4) Pretending Trent is far more interesting and fun than he normally is (also known as 'seeing through the veil')

Now, those are the most fundamental traditions, and require that one be a part of the pilgrimage to Trentmas. If you aren't going, or you don't know Trent personally, then you can still celebrate in the following fashion.
1) Wishing that you, too, were not at your day job.
2) Engaging in traditional Trentmas games. These include Dungeons and Dragons, Smash Brothers (any variation), Space Quest III and competitive napping (the person with the best combination of depth of nap, length of nap and quality of erotic dreams is the winner)
3) Singing Trentmas Carols:
* Rush's Tom Sawyer.
* Herman's Hermit's Henry the VIII.
* Schnitzelbank
* The Theme to Batman, no, not that one, the annoying one.
* The entirety of ELO's breakthrough concept album Time.
* In the Hall of the Mountain King, sung acapella.
4) Drinking Trentnogg and sharing happy times with nerdy friends.
* Trentnogg is Root Beer (or Dr. Pepper, for our friends south of the border and in Europe), Dark Rum and a shot of Jagermeister. I strongly suggest making it fresh, as the store-bought just isn't as good.
5) Inventing affectionate but surreal nicknames for friends and well-wishers.

There's going to be more on Trentmas. Depending on time and internet access, you will all be witness to my ultimate Trentmas blog. Witness as I and a host of friends embark on a journey of self discovery cross-country. Its like Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas without the drugs.
Actually, wait, its more exciting than that.

-Trent