The Best Holiday Drinks to Help You Embarrass Yourself This Year

Hey! It’s time everyone’s favorite, sacred, most blessed holiday tradition—getting stupid drunk in front of co-workers and relatives you barely tolerate and gleefully telling them off!

We here at the Jezebel Institute for Alcoholic Studies (aka my office) want to make sure that you, our dear readers, have access to all the latest and most innovative research to help you decide which fine beverage will be your undoing in front of relatives you can’t fucking stand and/or colleagues you just wish would die in a goddamn fire or something. Remember to choose wisely; you don’t want your alcoholic undoing to be fouled up because you didn’t select the right kind of booze to go with your awkward holiday moment. Here now, are our favorite selections:

First up, the Candy Cane! This is a drink you indulge in pretty much only if you hate your taste buds. Like, your taste buds stole your ATM card out of your wallet this one time and wiped out your bank account ordering Beanie Babies off QVC. This drink is also perfect for that time you want to finally tell off that aunt from Ohio who follows you around your mom’s house going “so when are you going to get engaged???” The Candy Cane is a wonderful accompaniment when you fianlly look her in the eye and say “Look. Just because your four marriages ended in spectacular failure and landed you on the Jerry Springer Show in 1998 throwing your show at the babysitter who ran off with your last husband, that doesn’t mean those are my dreams, OK? ” Trust me, three of these Pepto Bismol-themed concoctions and you won’t have any trouble telling old Aunt Busybody to back off.

OK, I know you like the guy who handles shipping and receiving in Accounting. All your friends know you like that guy. All your followers on Tumblr know, too. And thanks to our little friend Spiced Bourbon Pumpkin Milkshake, pretty soon, he’s going to know, too. So what if you know absolutely nothing about the poor boy except for how he likes to wear blue ties and he sometimes eats at Subway? That’s more than enough information to make an awkward, desperate, public declaration of undying love to someone about! Plus, when he starts to say “Umm, but I barely know you,” you can counteract with all those rich, elaborate fantasies you’ve made up in your head about his unfulfilled personal life he’s living without you. That’s how we roll on Christmas, people. I mean, haven’t you seen Love Actually? Jeez.

This one is for all my college/grad students out there. So, your parents think you are enrolled in a bunch of demanding pre-med classes that keep you way too busy to call, send an email or stick your head out of your dorm room that one time they drove four hours to visit and didn’t get to see you. But you haven’t had quite the guts to tell them that you dropped out of that school halfway through the semester and enrolled in a rewarding certificate program to become a full time dog yoga instructor. It’s OK! There’s a booze for that! Behold the Poinsetta. It has everything you need for a solid family sit-down (“everything” being Vodka, mostly). The best thing about this drink is the ratio of vodka to juice can be tweaked, to account for just how much money your parents shelled out for you to go to that fancy school in the first place. I recommend a standard 80-20 Vodka to extraneous bullshit juice ratio. Unless you were enrolled at Harvard. Then just serve them straight up Vodka. Seriously. They’re going to need it.

Now, I warn you, this last one is a doozy and rightly so. Because, we all know it’s about goddamn time you told off that shitty co-worker of yours. OMFG. You know the one I mean. She leaves everyday at 4:15 so she can “beat the traffic” even though you know for a fact she only lives 15 minutes away. You know that because she brings it up every time you talk about how you totally got your ass kicked on your miserable long ass commute. She’s the one that can’t stop talking about how great that episode of Rizzoli and Isles was she watched last night. She’s the one who guilts you into giving to the office coffee fund and then buys horrible generic crap that tastes like battery acid (SERIOUSLY WHAT DID SHE DO WITH THAT $60 SHE COLLECTED??) She’s the one who convinces your boss that productivity would be greatly improved by requiring mandatory weekend shifts and then never has to show up for a weekend shift because SENIORITY.

Also, you’re pretty sure she’s the one who told the guy in Accounting about your Tumblr. HASHTAG JELLY MUCH?

So for this one, we’re calling out the big guns: The Red Hot Santa Tini. After a few belts of this mind-bending, Basquiat-esque alcoholic masterpiece, you’ll have no trouble telling her just how far she can she stick her Isles up her Rizzoli.

So that’s it for our list of holiday drinks. Just remember, have fun, tell off all the jerks and close friends in your life will reckless abandon in whatever fashion you want, but PLEASE, no matter what you do, don’t drink and drive. Designated drivers are where it’s at this holiday season.