Sarah Palin, in her new Christmas book, claims Fox News president Roger Ailes once asked her, “What the bleep is so offensive about putting up a plastic Jewish family on my lawn at Christmastime?”

There are terrible vacation plans, and then there are deadly ones. A tipster recently forwarded us a promotional email from the Chinese travel agency Taedong Travel, copied below, hawking “the first Christmas tour of North Korea,” costing approximately $1,000 (€740) for five days and four nights in the capital city of Pyongyang. “You can now join local North Koreans for a Christmas and New Year to remember!” the pitch promises. “Will you be visited by Santa Claus, enjoy Ginseng flavoured Turkey or listen to familiar Christmas carols?”

Do you know what yesterday was? September 9. Also, the start of the Christmas advertising season. Fuck you, Kmart.

Earlier today, Mariah Carey posted almost three minutes of herself listening to herself (specifically her rendition of "O Come, All Ye Faithful") and rambling over the blaring music about celebrating Christmas in February. In the YouTube clip, she shows off a Christmas tree recently purchased in Connecticut, a roaring fire and decorations. She wishes everyone a merry Christmas and an early happy Valentine's Day. It is a festive, seasonally malapropos moment.

After the family dog passed away last year, Philip Michaels knew he would have to wait a while to allow his father time to grieve before bringing a new puppy into the house.

Your family doesn't get you at all. This Christmas, they got you $50 gift card to Forever 21, a $25 certificate to Starbucks, and a $30 card to Blinds to Go, when at heart, you're a caffeine-allergic nudist who lives in a windowless hut. Why couldn't they have just given you cash?

In a time older than dirt, before kids carried $500 worth of sext computers in their pockets, my mom always used to drop me off at the same place at the "snooty mall" when she did Christmas shopping. Big department stores would have a couch, grand piano and Christmas tree, and I'd sit with a book, waiting until she came back, listening to Christmas carols and the occasional wise-guy pianist playing something from Looney Tunes.

Some might argue that this is the best "photo with Santa" ever — and thousands of Facebook likes do make a strong case — but for my money, iconoclast wins over cutesy any day.

While you were busy spending Christmas Day appreciating the fact that you were alive and well and had people in your life that loved enough about you to buy you anything, let alone something that cost hundreds of dollars, there were many less fortunate souls out there who could not appreciate being alive and well and loved because — you may want to sit down for this part — they got a different expensive gift than the one they wanted.

Today isn't just human Christmas, you guys. It's also pet Christmas, where people wrap and give gifts to their pets despite the animals having literally no idea what's going on. Nonetheless, watching cats and dogs gnaw and tear at wrapping paper to uncover a gift is undeniably cute, so let's all warm our hearts by watching pets — like Mac the puggle, who just could not wait to get his reindeer chew toy in the video above — open their Christmas presents.

Merry Christmas! Come circle 'round the Gawker Yule Log GIF and complain about your family in the comfort of its looping digital glow. Happy Holidays, everyone.

Do you hear that? It's the triumphant wail of Mariah Carey, another $6 million in her bank account, after your Aunt Sheila's 16th playing of "All I Want for Christmas is You."

Every child eventually experiences that crushing day when he or she realizes that Santa Claus, that totally implausible overweight gift-giver, is (SPOILER) not real. For those of us who thrive on cynicism, it's almost difficult to remember a time when we could be so joyfully naive—it took us a few years to realize that everything is horrible. Here, we've gathered our stories of the day our innocence died. Please share your own in the comments.

The sequel to the silent Christmas classic The Snowman is set to air this Monday, more than 30 years after the original's premiere. The Snowman was nominated for an Academy Award and is broadcast annually throughout Great Britain. Occasionally shown with an incongruous introduction by David Bowie, it tells the wordless story of a young boy whose snowman comes to life and take him on a series of adventures, only to melt into nothingness by the dawn of the next day.

Mariah Carey sits in front of her new MacBook that Nick bought her for Christmas and holds one of her precious babies on her lap. Is it Monroe? Or maybe Moroccan? Damn, she forgot again. She's wearing a Santa red mini dress and sky high pumps on her feet. Her Santa cap hasn't left her head in days. December is a weird time in the Carey household and everyone knows it. All of her holiday staff is fully aware of what December means to her.

The great thing about Christmas is you can do it exactly the same as you did last time, every single year. Case in point: 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is basically and openly the same movie as 1990's megahit Home Alone. The main difference is that writer John Hughes and director Chris Columbus moved the setting from a Chicago suburb to Manhattan.

A British mother says her Christmas was ruined by one very unlikely scrooge: Santa Claus.

When John George III posted a Facebook status update promising his fellow high school students "a big surprise tomorrow," he thought it was clear that classmates should expect him to show up to school dressed like Santa Claus, given that he does so every year.

Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions to caity.weaver@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

You may want to swallow that eggnog or hot chocolate that's in your mouth before proceeding to the next sentence.