Beginning a week before the big event...

1. Your father begins bolting all the chairs to the floor.
2. Little brother Bobby solders up several 125-decibel (the loudness equivalent of a jet airplane engine five feet away) hand-held "bleepers".
3. Big sister Sue begins practicing flashing her boobs and dropping her hotpants.
4. A pre-production crew shows up to install a full-frame metal detector at the front door.
5. Jerry's main securityman Steve shows up with a bomb-sniffing dog and searches the house, not leaving until he also strip-searches your mother and sisters, just for the hell of it.
6. Older brother Aaron, home for the holidays from his job as a mule skinner in the Navy, starts a family class in creative profanity phrases.
7. Your grandfather comes out as an Imperial Idiot Wizard of the Klan, oldest sister Mary comes out as a transsexual leatherman, cousin Tim comes out as Mary's collared bottom bitch, and your mother announces she's leaving your father unless he gives up having sex with the trout he catches before releasing them back into the river on his fly fishing trips.
8. The Rev. Donald Wildassman of the American Council For Family Values meets you one Saturday morning in a public park and offers you $100,000.00 as a "gratitude expression" if you agree to slip "a little something" in Jerry's Christmas jello fruitsalad cocktail.
9. You tell absolutely no one that Jerry Springer is going to be your guest for Christmas dinner.
10. Roseanne and Oprah call up and ask if they can come over to your house after Christmas dinner is through and scarf down the leftovers.