This post is a day late and the title of the post tells the story of why I’m a day late—I had 31 beers during my Christmas holiday, so yesterday I pretty much slept till I had to go to work. Anyway, I had a great holiday and if you scroll below you can celebrate The Thirty-One Beers Of Christmas with me. It’s a holiday miracle!

Seeing as I hate most chain restaurants, this is an unlikely start for the beginning of my Christmas celebration, but I've been coming here for 21 years on Christmas eve now. It all started in 1993 when I was coming back after moving to New York that year. I wanted to meet my friends Clare, Toni and Bebe and we all agreed this would be a handy spot where we could all have a few afternoon beers and hang out. And it's become a yearly tradition to meet here. So let's go in and start this years holiday festivities!

Our waitress for the day was super-cute, Courtney. She's a great waitress and was also a lot of fun. She joined right in and we kidded around a lot with her.

And here's the crew that hung out at Chili's this year, from left: Steve, Kathy, Your Fooly and Bebe. Steve and Kathy have been guest stars on the MBIP blog in the past and Bebe has been meeting me here for the entire 21-year run. Clare had the flu this year and sadly, Toni died in February after battling Leukemia. Toni had a bad year last year, but managed to meet us here and hang out and we all had a lot of laughs. It's the last time I saw her and it was just one more time I learned a lesson to really try and enjoy moments with your friends and family because you never know when it might be the last time you see a person. R.I.P. Toni. And on a lighter note, we should have a pool to guess who out of this group will have the flu next year and who will be dead? Email me your guesses and the winner gets a free beer next year. Unless I'm the one who dies!

Okay, we had a great time at Chili's and I had four beers. Now time for a quick break at the MBIP World Headquarters before we travel to our next holiday spot.

And we have time for beer number five.

I enjoyed that beer while hanging out in the entertainment section of the MBIP World Headquarters and listened to part of John Lennon's "Rock 'n' Roll" CD.

And I leave with one dead soldier in the sink.

The next stop is a holiday favorite that I started coming to back when I was doing my 365 bar crawl bar, Jerry's Bar! It was the 362nd bar of my journey and now four years later here we are again!

Let's travel down the familiar tartan stairwell to...

Jerry's Bar! I always feel at home here, but where is everyone?

Okay, that's more like it, here I am with hostess, Anne and Jerry himself behind the bar!

I had three more beers and dinner at Jerry's Bar and I'm feeling a little pooped from all the drinking and running around and I think I'll take a little nap for now.

When I laid down for the nap it was 6:30PM and I'm waking up and the clock says it's 7:50PM, although it's 11 minutes fast, so you do the math, anyway, it's time for another beer!

Check it out, the beers have multiplied in the MBIP fridge, a Christmas miracle!

It's time to get to work on tomorrow's Christmas post, by Bob Gordon. Yeah, this is what I do every night, you think this shit just appears here?

Alright, the post is ready and I watched part of Rosemary's Baby and it's about 2:30 in the morning. Time to go to sleep. The beer count for the day is fifteen beers. Salud!

Okay, I had a good night's sleep and it's now Christmas afternoon at about 12:45PM. I'm meeting MBIP pal and frequent guest star, Amber here at the Last Chance Bar & Grill. We have a history here and I'll tell you about that in a minute.

For now, let's get inside and out of this horrible sunshine! It's way too bright out here!

Check out the festive bar! Let's snag a seat and get the first beer of the day!

And here's that beer, served up by Angie, the pretty and friendly bartender of this holiday afternoon.

This is the owner of Last Chance, Terry. The Last Chance is yet another bar that I went to on my 365 bar crawl. It was four years ago that I came here on Christmas day in 2010 and Terry was behind the bar that day. There's more memories to be shared from that day, so stay tuned!

Today, it's all that and many bags of chips on this festive afternoon!

There's pool tables and a smoking area in the back here, but we're here for Christmas beers, so let's go back to the bar!

This is Kathleen who stopped by to visit with Angie and have some holiday cheer on this Christmas afternoon. I love her smile!

I told you I have memories and a Christmas history here and MBIP pal, Amber who just showed up, looking pretty as always is part of that history. Four years ago I was supposed to meet Justin Glawe, who was doing his own Peoria Bar Blog at the time, but he couldn't make it and he sent Amber out to meet me and we had a lot of fun that afternoon. Then two years went by and I ended up moving back here and we met again when I visited All Smiles Dental Care for the first time. Since then we've become good friends and we thought we'd celebrate our fourth year of meeting out here on Christmas.

Here's Angie pouring us a specialty drink which are called, "Little Beers." It's some kind of liqueur with whipped cream on top of it. When the drink is all done they look like little beers, hence the name, "Little Beers."

Cheers!

Seeing that it's both Christmas and our 4th anniversary of meeting, I got a present for Amber and here it is, wrapped in festive Ebola wrapping paper.

I got her this vintage sign for the bar in the basement of her house where we had her birthday microwave festival a few months ago. I got it at Urban Artifacts and my favorite thing is they way that the "I" is left off of salami twice! Merry Christmas and Happy 4th Anniversary to Amber, thanks for your friendship!

Okay, after five beers at The Last Chance, it's back to Jerry's Bar for another beer!

I'm drinking beer number six down here, but where is Jerry and Anne?

They're up here getting ready for our Christmas celebration with my family. From left: Matt, Mary Beth, Terry, Caitlin, Greg, Jerry, Phil, Anne and Tom.

The celebration always starts with me putting Baby Jesus on top of the barn. But don't worry about him, as we all know, Baby Jesus can fly!

We had a really nice Christmas and I didn't want to bug everyone by taking pictures, so you'll just have to take my word for it! The beer total for the day right now is up to nine beers.

One of the presents I got was from my niece Caitlin who gave me this Gumby key chain! It's great to have him back as we burned the last Gumby up last 4th of July! Be looking for him in future MBIP episodes!

And here's the seven dead soldiers from my final night caps on Christmas evening. I had five at Last Chance, four at our family's Christmas celebration bringing this holiday drinkathon total to 31 beers! I hope you all had as much fun over the Christmas holiday season as I did. Thanks to everyone who hung out with me and we'll see you all tomorrow!

Beer!

Surprise link, click on it...I dare you!

-------------------------

Bonus Holiday Family Photo By Matt!

My nephew-in-law, Matt took this family photo using a remote control thing-a-me-bob on his camera. And look, there's always some asshole that's spoiling the family photo and that asshole is always me! Matt's wife and my niece, Mary Beth (standing next to Anne) is due to give birth to their first child in a couple of weeks. My sister Terry made a game where we all guessed the exact date of birth and what they are going to name the baby. I guessed 4/20 for the birth date and I'm pretty sure they're going to name the little guy, Tupac. I'll let you know if I won after the baby is born, so stay tuned for that!