The 5 Most Baffling Christmas-Related Crimes Ever

5 Man Steals a Handful of Snakes for Christmas Presents

So you've just gotten out of jail for burglary, and you're rebuilding your life from scratch. I'm not talking about borrowing some money from mom and taking the worst shit-shoveling manual labor job you can find until the community stops throwing broken glass at you. I'm talking about sleeping on the floor of an abandoned building, having been released so recently that you still carry your jail ID card.

You're pondering the fact that when you were a kid, you never wrote this on your "What I want to be when I grow up" writing assignment, when you suddenly remember, "Holy shit, I have a child person that I created with my big ol' crime dong!" You decide right there on the spot that he isn't going to turn out like you, and his life is going to start getting better right now with this Christmas.

One hour later, you're running out the back of a pet store with a cash register under one arm and a handful of snakes in the other. That's what happened to the guy in that link.

At the risk of getting all preachy, let me offer this advice to anyone in a really hard spot this (or any other) year: If you can't afford to buy a gift for your kids, there are other ways to go about it that are so much easier and less filled with stolen snakes. Churches are a good place to start, even if you're not a religious person. The way I see it, if you're morally flexible enough to steal serpents, you can bend the rules enough to ask Catholics and Baptists for a favor. Barring that, find your local Chamber of Commerce and explain your situation. I've never seen one that doesn't have a list of a dozen or more totally free, no-obligation help programs for people in (believe it or not) your exact situation. But the one surefire way to make your kids' Christmas really shitty is to have their mother explain to them that their dad can't be there because he's in jail -- again.

And that's really what Christmas is all about: doing your best to not go to jail for stealing snakes.

4 Man Light-Sabers the Shit Out of Fellow Christmas Shoppers

Adults, if there is one rule you have to remember during the frenzy of December shopping (besides "Don't steal snakes" -- seriously, don't steal snakes), it's "Don't grab the nearest toy and beat the shit out of people with it." Now, given, if you're in Toys R Us and bitchy, frantic moms are crowding the aisles, and it's just a beehive of parental stupidity, it is incredibly easy to look down at the toy light saber in your hand and hit the "On" switch, a sinister smile creeping up your face as your teeth and eyes yellow from the alignment change. What you have to do in that situation is remember the wise words of Yoda:

"Don't start blindly beating the shit out of random people with your fucking light saber."

The guy in that link didn't remember that. So when the dark side set in, he did in fact light that fucker up and commence a whoppin'.

If you thought there wasn't room for a "more importantly" in this lesson, I sincerely apologize for how sheltered you have been up until this point in your life. Because more importantly ... don't then steal that light saber from the store, walk out to the parking lot and continue swinging it at police. Even if (and, yes, this also actually happened) you seemingly use the Force to disable one Taser, and then follow it up by using the light saber to block and deflect another wired Taser shot, you are not in fact a Jedi. You are a crazy douche who got really lucky when wildly swinging a piece of plastic while a couple of annoyed cops yelled "Dude, knock it off!"

3 Frosty the Snowman Assaults the Police

You know how, when most adults discuss the entire month of December, they constantly use the phrase "kids' holiday"? That's because it is. No matter how much religious emphasis you place on it, no matter how much you stress the family aspect of it, it always boils down to seeing kids have the time of their lives as they open presents. Seeing them camp out in front of the TV to watch their once-a-year specials because it's just weird to watch that shit in July. Even though I've been known to do it myself from time to time. Don't fucking judge me, I'm an adult.

So here's the thing: If you're a grown man, and you put on a Frosty the Snowman costume, and you enter yourself in the local Christmas parade at 10 in the morning, you had better damn well be doing it for the kids. Because if not, it means you're creepy and weird, and you're probably going to end up kicking a police dog, hitting one cop in the face with your big ol' Frosty head and pushing another as they try to stuff your ass into the back of the squad car.

Nobody is really clear on exactly what started it. Frosty claims that he said something to a cop about having a K-9 unit with him, and the cop just went off. The cops said it was more like the guy walked by and physically kicked their dog and then became increasingly more belligerent until they had to physically stuff him into the back seat like filling a stocking with live badgers.

The great thing is that when something like this happens, it's a whole lot harder to convince people you're on the level when you're still on probation from another disorderly conduct charge.

2 Man Puts Four Kids in the Trunk to Take Them to a Christmas Parade

If there's one thing that I really hoped we would never have to add to beginners' driving courses, it would be "Don't put children in the trunk of your car." From a common-sense standpoint, I'd rank it right up there with "Don't take naps while driving" and "Don't see how many pedestrians you can ramp." But evidently, we're going to have to, because here's a very real story about a guy who borrowed his grandfather's Crown Victoria, put tags on it that were stolen from a PT Cruiser, filled the main part of the car with people, stuffed four kids into the trunk, got behind the wheel without a license and drove them all to their town's Christmas parade.

Now, I'll give him this: He claims that the kids wanted to ride back there, and I actually believe him. My kids have asked me the same thing, and I asked my mom and dad when I was a kid. I understand that not everyone does that, but you have to understand that my family are all pretty fucked up people with odd senses of humor. The point is, I've seen kids ask if they could do it, so I know it's a thing. However, in all of our cases -- even the ones from my own parents, who were full-on abusive -- we understood the basic rule that if you have kids in your trunk and someone finds out, they will think you are a goddamn fucking psycho who stuffed his kids into the trunk and scared them into lying to the police about whose idea it was. So we never actually did it, because as insane as we all are, we're not that fucking crazy.

According to him, though, we're blowing it way out of proportion. Because, obviously, that guy understands priorities.

1 Man Gets Arrested for Telling Kids That Santa Isn't Real

I can't even begin to tell you how much I love a story about someone getting arrested for being a blatant dick. It's one of my favorite things in the world. Like that problem kid a few years back who got arrested for opening one of his Christmas presents early. Or the guy who was about to be let go from a minor traffic stop, completely free of even a warning, until he pissed on the police car (and got the whole thing caught on video).

But not even the woman who demanded $300,000 from 911 before she would pull her car over or the kid who got arrested for Twitter trolling an Olympic diver about his dead father compares to the absolute douche who tried to ruin Christmas for every kid within earshot.

Kingston, Ontario, has a Santa Claus parade every November, and the one this year was interrupted by a waste of semen who got drunk, "slicked his hair back with gel into the shape of devil horns" and announced to every kid he could reach that Santa doesn't exist. One of the awesome people in the crowd called the police, and the guy was arrested for causing a disturbance. But just in case that wasn't enough of a "Fuck you, too, buddy," they tacked on public intoxication and (as an added stocking stuffer for all you karma lovers) violating his probation.

Look, I understand that people aren't perfect, and that when December rolls around, people have a tendency to just lose their minds. I also understand that some of this stuff, while it's easy to make fun of (and quite frankly, pretty damn funny to me), can be pretty depressing. But there is an absolute, surefire way to help curb the problem: Keep your goddamn cool and don't act like a fucking idiot this holiday season. And for the love of God, if you find yourself in a dark place in life and things start feeling chaotic, please, please, please stop -- take a breath, put down the snakes and walk away. At that point, the best Christmas gift you can give is simply being here and being sane. I promise you that if your friends and family don't have legitimate mental problems, they won't think less of you because you were unable to fulfill their snake wishes this year.

John has a Twitter and a Facebook fan page where he sometimes blah blah whatever.