Chrismahanakwanzakah...

Every year, cadets have a dinner right before TEE's. The tradition dates back to when the first time you got to go home was Christmas of your Cow (Junior) year, so, the entire corps would sing the 12 days of Christmas and the Freshman would decorate tables. It was a bitchass thing to do...making people who wouldn't see their families sing and celebrate and decorate because they weren't going home...but they get to go home now and the tradition still holds. It's a matter of pride if your freshman decorate your table more extravagently than the tables around you and the decorations are amazing.

This year was no exception. Our plebes did an outstanding job and got cigars from the white house for us. After the 12 Days of Christmas, the whole Corps goes outside and smokes cigars. The following are pictures of the night along with a video. I'm going to do it play by play style, cause it's the easiest to do...

First, the Plebes go into the Mess Hall and decorate the tables. Some bring in full trees, some bring in inflatable Homer Simpsons...others made rubber trees (full sized trees made out of inflated condoms) and yet others went very traditional...it all depended on what they felt the upperclassmen would like. Here are some examples:

This one in particular cracked me up...A Festivus, for the Rest of Us!

Here is my table and all of us who sit there:

At dinner, I always use the santa goblet my mom bought me plebe year. When I had to decorate the table, I had one for each person at our table...all the people who sat with me still have theirs, and I saw three tonight...mine is special:

After that, we all sing the twelve days of Christmas. We lift the tables on "Five Golden Rings" and we stack chairs on the tables to make the person who sits at the head of your table taller than everyone else. So, we were standing on chairs, holding our table at our chests, and the table commandant was standing on a chair on top of the table. What you see is one fifth of the Mess Hall:

After that, we all went outside and smoked. Here are some pictures. The dude in the different uniform is from the Coast Guard Academy and he spent a semester with us...real good guy:

After the cigars, I quickly changed and went to the Officer's Club to have some beers where I met up with my best friends here...other then Troy, who had a project to do. Me, Davey and Doobie have been together for three years now. Actually, this is our second anniversary of being friends. We met studying for TEE's...History specifically, when we didn't like the study session we were in. We started our own and would have failed without each other, and we spent the next week eating, sleeping and studying together in an awesome cycle. We'd sleep on desks, in beds or on the floor and without a word, wake up and start studying again. They always said "cooperate and graduate" That's these guys...without them, I'd have failed, no doubt.