Leland Klassen’s Christmas Comedy

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we continue with the Our American Stories Christmas Special. Up next, Leland Claussen is here to share stories from his Christmas past. Let's take a listen. I love Christmas.

Love it. Christmas carols, probably one of my favorite things about Christmas, right? The same songs every year. The good ones, right?

There's some amazing, there's some classics, but there's also some stinkers, let's be honest. There's a few Christmas carols that don't belong in the Christmas carol book, right? You know what I'm talking about. Three Ships, huh? I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas day, on Christmas day. I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas day in the morning.

So? Ships come sailing in every day. Just because it happened on Christmas doesn't make it a Christmas song.

I take a shower every day. It's not a Christmas carol. There's another one I don't like. Good King Wenceslas. I'll tell you why. Because there's like 492 verses and nothing to do with Christmas.

Nothing. There's a good king Wenceslas went to town riding on a pony or whatever. Here's another one I don't like. And I might get in trouble for this one because I know it could be your favorite. And I apologize if it is, but I don't like 12 Days of Christmas. Yes, yes, yes.

Well here's why. I don't, because there's not 12 days of Christmas. There's one day.

And what's it called again? Christmas. 12 days. Maybe it's the Mennonite in me, but who has money for that many gifts? That's excessive. That's why the gifts were so lame after a while.

They just ran out of ideas right? I don't know what to get. Why don't you run down to the turtle dove shop and get a couple French hens. Actually, so here's the thing. My wife and I, our first big fight was about Christmas. So we got married November 5th 1994.

And the first, it was like the December 1st weekend, so barely a month later. And my wife was like, and keep in mind, I was not even married for a month yet. So I didn't, there's certain things I didn't get. Okay, I didn't understand some of this, some of the cues she was giving me. Okay, because she was like, yeah, it'll be a great idea if we, if we went out and got a Christmas tree and then brought it back in the first, like a December 1st every year and then decorated it and it'll be our Christmas tradition. And I was like, huh.

And then she was like, no, let's do it. Don't you think it'd be a good idea? We'll go get a tree and then we'll, we'll decorate it together. We should, we should do that.

Don't you think we should do that? And I was like, I don't know. And then she was like, no, Leland, we're going to go down and get a tree.

We're going to bring it back and we're going to decorate it and that's going to be our Christmas tradition. And I was like, no thanks. Yeah.

I told you I didn't know some stuff. And then she started crying. She was like, I wanted to create some Christmas memories. And I'm like, we're doing that. Not good ones, but it's memories. And look, it's 24 years later. We're still talking about it.

Mission accomplished. We have our own traditions, me and my own family. We've got some traditions that we do for Christmas. Christmas movies.

That's kind of our thing. Every year we watch the same Christmas movies. They're classics. You know the ones I'm talking about? Die Hard.

Die Hard 2. A couple of years back, I wanted my kids to experience Christmas like I used to. I wanted them to experience winter like I did. So I flew them back to Saskatchewan for Christmas.

Why do you got to hate man? Why? Here's the, here's the thing that's kind of depressing though, if I'm being honest. To fly a family of four back to Saskatchewan from here costs about the same to fly a family of four to Hawaii. So that's, that's depressing. You're making that flight.

You're like, it feels like, this feels wrong. It just feels, it's getting colder I think. Anyway, I flew them back and it's the main thing I wanted my sons to do because this was an amazing Christmas memory that I had. I was making snow forts and I'm not talking about piling stuff on top of things. I'm talking about we used to get these massive drifts coming off the hills, okay? Massive snow drifts that just, they were massive. They went on forever and so our snow forts were like, were tunnel forts. You dig in tunnels all these different places and it was so much fun and I want, I so badly wanted my kids to experience this. So we went and I'm like, you're gonna do it.

I don't care how old you are and they're like, okay whatever. So but here's what I realized about myself. When I got in that first tunnel I started digging and then I realized halfway through. I was like, oh that's right.

I'm claustrophobic. You know what I actually realized it was I was digging away. Adrenaline was going. I'm digging and all of a sudden it gets dark and I turned around and my son is crawling in behind me, right? I'm like, hey, hey, back out, back out, back out. I need to see light.

I need to see the light. It's tunnel safety rules. Back out. I've been digging tunnels for 35 years.

I know what I'm doing. Back out of the tunnel. So I was digging. I was digging one way and my son was digging the other and what happens is you finally dig through. You can hear and all of a sudden we reach through and grab each other's hand.

It's like one of the funnest things about digging and doing tunnels, right? So I said, okay, back out. I'm gonna dig it all the way through. Gonna be the first one through this our first tunnel.

So he's like, okay, cool. He backed out. I dug it out and then I went through.

I didn't dig it out enough. Yeah, I got stuck halfway and I'm panicking. I'm freaking out on the inside, right?

But I don't want him to know because he already thinks I'm an idiot, right? So I'm trying to play it all cool. I'm like, hey, you know, it'd be really fun if you just grab my hand and just pull me out of here. It's funner if you do it faster.

You just grab it and pull it out. It's gonna be fun. We got a lot of work to do. So let's just do it. We're gonna do it.

We should do it. He pulled me out. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I'm dying. He pulled me out. I was like, yeah, so don't worry about the yellow snow.

That's probably some critters got in there. It happens. It happens.

I don't know. My folks, here's the thing about my parents. So, you know, old men are my brethren, parents. I'm not saying they're legalistic, but they love the rules.

Kind of love the following. Like they wouldn't even, like what I'm trying to say is like everything was by the book. Everything, they wouldn't even round up on taxes, okay? Everything was by the book except, except when it came to Christmas trees. I'm pretty sure we were just stealing. We never went to a lot. There was never a tree lot. There was a side road and my dad pointing to the bush beside us and saying, go cut that tree down.

And I kind of knew it was wrong because he was always rushing me, right? Go get that tree. Okay, hurry up. Somebody's coming faster. Look, do you want Jesus to have a tree or not?

I don't know. I love Christmas though. Love it. You know what I love the most? I think about Christmas is the sense of hope that we have at Christmas. We talk about peace. We talk about joy. There's a sense of hope. We all feel it.

We all talk about it. We all know like, yeah, yeah, there is something, something about Christmas is a hope. And the first Christmas, they also had hope, Israelites at the time.

They're being oppressed by the Romans, right? There was this, but they had, they had this prophecy. So their hope was in this prophecy of this coming King, the prophecy. And to them, it was a conquering King. He was coming in. He was just going to be like, he's going to take back the land, right?

Everybody down, get down. He was like, all the Israelites into the choppa. It was going to be, maybe not 80s, aren't he? But it was, that's what they thought they were getting. But the God was completely different, right? What they got was this, this, this, this helpless baby in a, basically in a food trough in a barn, right? That's what, that's what it was.

Away in a manger, away in a, like it's some kind of food trough in a barn. That's the real, think about that. Not at all what they thought they were getting, right? But God knew God, cause God had a plan.

God's always got a plan. Ask Drake. He's, what? Only about 25% of the people got that. Everybody else is like, I don't know.

Here's Drake. And you've been listening to comedian Leland Claussen. And thanks to the folks at Vision Video for providing that footage.

And thank you to Leland himself for the laughs. And by the way, we want to hear your Christmas stories for our upcoming Christmas specials. Send them and they can be silly.

They can be amusing. String them together. Send them along. Leland Claussen's family stories are Christmas special here on Our American Stories. Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told.

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