Here's one of the LA Times' suggestions for "D.I.Y. Gifts" this holiday season. Uh...crack? [LAT]

Citigroup has had a rough time recently. But the bank wouldn't want all the grim news to discourage the bright-eyed college students who signed on to join Citi's investment banking analyst class this May, would it? Of course not! Above you'll find the warm, fuzzy e-card the bank sent to its new recruits this week, which was accompanied by animated snowflakes. One thing it didn't come with, unfortunately: a guarantee that Citigroup will still exist by the time graduation rolls around.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" remixed as life in an ad agency. They make Pigpen work through the weekend! Monsters. Click through for the video:

Happy Holidays from Viacom, the home of hundreds of holiday layoffs! Employees, please observe these piddling, needless rules as you slave away in our caverns on Christmas. MEMO AHEAD:

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones isn't letting the crappy economy stop him from going all-out this holiday season. This past weekend Jones unveiled his annual Christmas display outside his Greenwich mansion, which features 15,000 lights syncronized to a four-minute looping soundtrack. (If you pull up near the house, you can listen to the music by tuning your radio to 90.5 FM.) The display will be open to the public from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. through Dec. 20. And if you're one of the people who invested in Jones' fund and you've since been notified that Jones is no longer permitting clients to withdraw their cash? Well, you can always walk up to the front door and try asking in person! [Greenwich Time via Dealbreaker]

There weren't too many signs of doom and gloom at Google's holiday party last night. The shindig at Penthouse 15 on West 37th Street featured "top shelf liquor (but no shots), filet mignon, and had the sickest game room set up," reports ChiChi212, who somehow managed to sneak her way into what was supposed to be a staff-only event. "There was a moving screening room, a game room with every console imaginable, karaoke. I mean these people were not kidding." Guess not! Unfortunately, she also says the room was filled with "tons of socially awkward people," which is probably because Google decided to schedule separate holiday parties for its engineering and sales staffs. (This was the one for the engineers, obvs.) And it was still a step down from last year's fête, which took place at the Rainbow Room and cost $300 a head. Still, most companies aren't exactly breaking out filet mignon for their employees this year—if they're having a party at all, of course—although you can always refer to this handy roundup that The Business Sheet put together if you feel like reliving the lavish holiday parties of years past.

With the holiday season upon us (and with the first snowflakes beginning to fall), we thought we'd check in with some of the luxe hotels at ski resorts around the country—you know, the ones in places like Aspen that book up months or years in advance—to see how they're faring this year. The answer? Three of the five hotels had availability, an ominous sign given it's high season and Christmas is just two weeks away. The good news, of course, is that if you're one of those people who waits until the last minute to book a trip, you'll have no trouble securing a deluxe room at the St. Regis in Aspen. (Assuming you still have money left in your bank account, that is.) Our survey of the five hotels after the jump.

How is the greeting card industry adjusting to the economic downturn? Designers are toning down the glitter ("That's just not the mindset anymore"), and sticking with more traditional colors, like deep reds and greens. Cards with "a lot of shopping bags or gifts piled high" are out. Most depressingly, tacky is back in big way: "The text is deliberately long-winded. Before, cards had shorter, snappier messages. 'Now people want longer copy,' says Rochelle Lulow, creative director of American Greetings' editorial studio. 'During difficult times, we see people wanting to connect on a deeper, emotional level that goes above and beyond.'" [WSJ]

The annual tree lighting at Rockefeller Center takes place tonight beginning at 7pm. Fifth Avenue between 47th and 50th will be closed to traffic for much of the evening, so be sure to stay far from Midtown. Or go mingle with the tourists and make them feel welcome, assuming you have nothing better to do. [NY1]

It's not all doom and gloom on Wall Street! You'll be happy to hear that Credit Suisse's annual Christmas party is still taking place next week. [Dealbreaker]

Are you ready for a PR quiz? Okay! If you were a marketing executive at the nation's largest retailer, and an employee got trampled to death at the big holiday shopping sale at one of your stores, might you consider pulling an ad that trumpets your holiday sales with the line, "We're opening more lanes than ever to make Christmas shopping easier!" We're just saying. People could get the wrong idea about your stance on trampling. And Adrants points out that the ad below was still in heavy TV rotation throughout the entire weekend:

The funny thing about the holiday season this year (besides the unreported death of Santa) is that Americans no longer have any money to buy expensive presents for each other—but magazines are plunging ahead with their year-end holiday gift guides as if everything was fine and dandy! Okay, that's not really "funny." Nor is it tragic, because hey, if these magazines want to walk themselves off a cliff, that's their business. It's ominous. What the hell does the future hold for luxury magazines in a world where those cutesy "Gifts Under $100" are a necessity, not a niche?

Are you ready to sit at home eating leftovers and viewing the internet? The Friday after Thanksgiving is Buy Nothing Day! It's the day when lefties around the world celebrate being broke by abstaining from capitalism for a day and feeling superior, while the rich run wild on pre-Christmas sales. It's a nice thought and many of you would probably theoretically support it, but, you know... sales. This year, however, the anarchist types have an extra incentive: nobody has any money to spend anyhow!

Every year (since last year) on this magical day before Thanksgiving, we bring you this inspiring message of hope and change from the original Barack Obama, junkie wife-murderer William S. Burroughs. It is a prayer to heal our troubled nation in these dark times.

This adorable hand-turkey is supposedly from future White House Chief of Staff/fingerless freak Rahm Emanuel. Happy Holidays! [Eric Spiegelman]

Vice President-elect Smilin' Joe Biden is spending this Thanksgiving in lovely Nantucket. Just like he takes the train to work every day, he took the ferry from Hyannis. It is important to maintain your blue-collar cred when traveling to Nantucket to holiday. Biden shocked onlookers by pouring his own coffee at a local store. (How does he take his coffee? "Turns out he likes his coffee like he likes his presidents," our Gawker Nantucket Operative reports.) [Cape Cod Times]

Yesterday when we posted the infamous ad agency sex tape, our video department thoughtfully censored the clip by superimposing a Thanksgiving turkey over the center of the action. This led to a smorgasboard (HEH) of Thanksgiving-themed jokes in the comments. So in honor of our peerless commenters, and because it's the afternoon before Thanksgiving, we're posting the best (?) below. Vote in the comments for the one that makes you groan the least:

Can still-president George W. Bush continue to wow us with asinine mistakes with a mere two months left in his presidency when he's so clearly checked out already? If his upcoming Hanukkah party is any indication, he's still got it! Attached, his invitation to the White House Hanukkah reception, sent to Jewish leaders across the nation. As you can see, the invite shows a Clydesdale delivering the traditional "Hanukkah Tree" to a White House decorated top to bottom in Hanukkah wreaths. Ha ha ha they just don't care.

Liberals are waging war on America's Second-Favorite Holiday: Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is an annual feast celebrating the victory of Good God-Fearing Puritans over Cranberries and various Fowls. You can obviously understand why the PC Police hates Thanksgiving, the holiday celebrating kind European settlers in a New World and the noble savages who aided them in conquering this vast, empty continent. Just look how widespread, pervasive, and not-at-all-imagined this War on Thanksgiving has become! In Claremont, California, a liberal professor who specializes in "Native American literature" wrote a letter to her daughter's elementary school claiming the tradition of dressing children as "Pilgrims and Indians" was demeaning and racist. Now the school is going to cancel Thanksgiving, or at least the part where children dress in amusing stereotypes of traditional aboriginal American garb. Parents are furious!!!!

Every November 25, New York celebrates its independence from the British. What, you didn't know about Evacuation Day? It is a much more awesome holiday than Thanksgiving, because it involves gunfire, greased flagpoles, and indignities being visited upon English people, one of the fundamental tenets of comedy. The British never made very likely imperialists because, as we all know, they're a fey bunch of ninnies who enjoy dressing in ladies' clothing and tending to their gardens. But they did run United States for a time, and their terrible despotic rule was marked with grievous injustices like asking that we pay an extra ha'penny (which in modern dollars is nearly a tuppence!) to drink our precious tea. So after some mooks in Boston got wasted, dressed in racist costumes, and engaged in some reckless property damage (some things never change, right?) we all decided that meant war, and a couple years later, the rest of the colonies had beaten the British and all that remained was for them to finally leave New York, where we never really minded their presence that much, as they were certainly preferable to those mooks in Boston. Still, the British were a little bitter about having to leave New York and go back to London, where the ladies all had comically screechy voices and sometimes chased you around at high speed while wearing frilly lingerie. So on their way out of town, they acted quite the cads!