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It’s that time of year—the Holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanza, Boxer Day, New Years, Epiphany… You get the gist… People can have plenty of opinions on holidays. Some people love them—perhaps they thrive with the stress, and the giving and receiving of gifts. They may even love spending all that time with family. Others, hate them. They hate the energy invested, the money spent, and the family.

We Armenians are the “Love the Holidays” type. It doesn’t take much to be sainted in the Armenian church. Part of that reason may be that Armenians find any excuse to celebrate together. In addition to the major holidays that others celebrate, we have several more on our calendar.

For example, we like our grapes so much, that we have a whole day devoted as a holiday in August to celebrate grapes. (Then again, because grapes yield some great alcohol, why not devote an entire day of the year celebrating this fruit?)

As you celebrate the holidays this time of year, remember that if you’re not an Armo, you are missing out. You are missing out on the amount of food (we’re talking quantity and quality) that is fit for a small village. You are missing out on lots of dancing. (Yes, we celebrate the birth of Jesus in style). And you are missing out on going broke. (Yes, the credit card industry will give us the “best debtors” of the year award for the 14th straight year as we spend loads of money on designer gifts)

Merry Christmas! Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Pari Gaghand!

Armenians love their TVs. The TV is on first thing in the morning and it’s the thing you put on sleep and let it turn off by iteslf as you doze off to sleep. In fact, most Armenians probably don’t know that the power button on the remote turns off the TV since the sleep function is always used to turn off the TV.

It’s hard to say why Armenians love TV. We’ve already mentioned how much Armenians love Satellite TV, but there is something about having a TV or 4 in the small 2 bedroom apartment that tells an Armenian family that you are normal and OK.

And the way that Armenians watch TV is either an advertiser’s dream or nightmare. If you want to be a true Armenian, follow these directions:

1. Turn on TV.
2. Put the volume up. Try pressing the plus button as much as you can.
3. Channel surf until you find something that you don’t particularly care to watch.
4. Leave the room.
5. Open all of your windows so your neighbors are reminded that you are still alive and kicking.

The TV is a staple of an Armenian home. Find an Armenian home without a TV and be suspect and cynical at their intentions and whether they really love being Armo like the rest of us.

Did you know that Armenians had the tragic experience of going through the first genocide of the 20th century? (Actually, some Armenians will proudly argue that we Armenians went through the last genocide of the 19th century, considering that some of the systematic massacres of Armenians in villages in the 19th century were part of a larger genocidal policy toward the Armenians.)

Do a search for “Armenian” on the Amazon website and you’ll see that there are three books that crack the top 10—Learn the Language, cookbooks, and books about the genocide. Armenian authors will invariably write something about the genocide. Take a look at the back of Armenian newspapers and magazines (the classifieds section that promotes books) and you’ll see that an overwhelming number of them are about the genocide.

Soon, you’ll realize that there will be a number of blogs that will pop up about the Armenian genocide. So we Armos (and the rest of the world, except if you’re Turkey) should not worry—there will be plenty of writing about the genocide (except in Turkey).

Go to an Armenian bazaar and most of the books on display at the book table will be about the genocide. On another post, I will reflect about this obsession with the genocide, but this post will simply be about the books that talk about the greatest tragedy of the early 20th century. (By the way, did I mention that Armenians had the unfortunate experience of going through the first genocide of the 20th century?)

Do you want to write a post for “Stuff Armos Like?” Are you an Armo or an adopted Armo and there are things about our peculiar culture that reminds you of how unique and peculiar we really are? I want to open up the posts to other people. Got an idea about “Stuff Armos Like?” Post a comment. If it fits the theme of the site I’ll put it up and give you all the credit.

Do not argue with an Armenian about current events because you are likely to lose. Armenians are always up on the news from around the world. And since the Armenian community is relatively small when you consider all of humanity, most of the news is about everyone but Armenians. (And since a lot of news is bad news, that may not be a bad thing!) I’m kind of glad that the news from Armenia is not that exciting most of the time.

Armenians will subscribe to every 24-hour news channel (especially the foreign ones like Al-Jazeera) just to make sure that no news passes on them. They will devour newspapers, listen to the radio (think shortwave), and of course glue themselves to the TV set.

Of course, most of the information is relatively trivial (which may be the reason why Armenians are generally good at “Trivial Pursuits”). But all that information adds up in the mind of an Armenian, which will strengthen his or her arguments when it comes to politics or other curent event controversy.

Unfortunately, Armenians are not born with many filters that help them figure out whether the news story is legit or a fair assessment of what really happened. And add an Armenian’s propensity toward embellishment, you have Armenians believing preposterous things and take on positions that may not be the most politcially correct.