CHRISTMAS PARTY FESTIVITY LEVEL

Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other, admiring your Christmas tree ornaments, singing carols around the piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres.

Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me," guzzling their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.

Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate objects, singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," gulping down other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres in the piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike them.

Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies, are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas tree. The piano is missing. So is the dog.

For best results you want to keep your party somewhere around Level 3, unless you rent your home and own firearms, in which case you can go to Level 4. The best way to get to Level 3 is eggnog spiked with grain alcohol.