Christmas before Thanksgiving? Put those candy canes away and pass the turkey, please

I’m having an identity crisis. I don’t know who I am. It’s barely November and I’ve already wrapped a couple of Christmas presents.

This is fundamentally the antithesis to my personality. Worse, I have for years preached, overshared and I’m certain bored people with my less-than-riveting, highly sanctimonious thoughts on how I believe in letting the holidays “breathe.”

By this I mean celebrating Thanksgiving before I welcome Christmas into the fold. For example, to me, having your Christmas tree up on Thanksgiving is a breach of the holiday code of conduct.

Thanksgiving deserves its time to shine and shouldn’t be upstaged by its glitzy, show-offy holiday neighbor.

Now, I will confess that some of my “breathing” philosophy is based on the fact that I have a lot of really cute Thanksgiving home decor, including a rather impressive array of decorative turkeys.

I also have beaded turkey pillows (gorgeous by the way) and I just can’t imagine not letting all the gobble, gobble decorations have their own perfect day.

Yes, I know you could have your Thanksgiving and Christmas decor up at the same time, but just ugh on that. Thanksgiving and Christmas don’t play well together. It’s all about the color scheme.

Christmas is red and green. Thanksgiving is brown and orange with a hint of yellow. They’re totally competing on the holiday color wheel. To mix those hues would be an insult to both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from trying. I recently saw a ceramic cookie jar with Santa riding a turkey. It was off-putting, to say the least. Talk about two great things that don’t go great together.

Primarily because there is no turkey in our solar system big enough to handle the girth and sheer poundage of Santa Claus. The biggest turkey in recorded history only weighed 86 pounds, or about six stone since the turkey hailed from the U.K.

Seems a little weird, doesn’t it, that the jumbo turkey was British? One would think that the world’s most ginormous turkey would be American. Am I wrong about this?

It’s sort of like being told Rudolph is not from the North Pole and instead calls Miami Beach home.

While we’re on the topic of Rudolph, has it ever seemed highly insulting to you that the red-nosed reindeer’s parents are “Donner” and “Donner’s Wife”?

It’s unbelievable that the mom who birthed and reared an icon doesn’t get her own name. I’ve been steamed about this for years.

But back to why I, for the first time ever, have wrapped Christmas presents before Dec. 1. I blame Amazon.

I bought some gifts from the October Prime Day sale, and I just thought, well, I’ll go ahead and wrap those presents and just get that done.

It was eerie. There I was with Christmas paper and candy cane striped ribbon wrapping gifts on my dining room table by my (gasp) turkey collection. As I was cutting the paper I felt some fairly intense turkey side eye.

Then I heard Christmas music. WTH? Had my turkey decor become sentient? Was this their way of mocking me? Should I flee my house right this very minute?

Thankfully, I quickly discovered my husband had said, “Alexa, play Christmas music.”

When I asked him why he did that he replied, “I thought we were breaking all of your goofy holiday rules,” and then he laughed.

I’ve now got a feeling that there might be a Santa riding a turkey cookie jar in my future. All I have to say is that it better not be my Christmas present.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and on TikTok @snarkyinthesuburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.

This story was originally published October 30, 2024 at 5:00 AM.