Thanksgiving is a MEAL — Christmas is a season.

No one ever sings “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” about Thanksgiving. No one holds Ugly Thanksgiving Sweater parties. I don’t recall watching The Great Thanksgiving Light Fight on television. What colors go with Thanksgiving? Yellow, orange, and brown. Not only are those UGLY colors, but they also happen to be the exact colors (minus red) of autumn. Whereas Christmas has red and green, but what are the colors of winter? White, blue, and red. Minimal correlation. Thanksgiving Eve? I don’t have trouble falling asleep the day before Thanksgiving, that’s for sure. 

If the holidays were a grilled cheese sandwich, Christmas is the toasted bread with butter on either side, and Thanksgiving is the single slice of cheese in the middle: slightly important, but not nearly as enjoyable. 

Decorations take a lot of work to set up, especially when your family has 20+ bins of decorations like mine. It takes approximately four weekends to set up our interior and exterior for the Christmas season, which equates to around a month in total. What is the point of waiting until December 1st when you finish on New Year’s? Exactly. If you start on November 1st, everything is set up, the work is done, and you can enjoy watching The Polar Express with your cup of hot cocoa all throughout December looking at your beautiful decorations. And by the time the new year rolls around, you’re ready to pack them away. 

One can simply never get tired of Christmas. The movies, the lights, the music, it’s irreplaceable and never goes out of style. Do some people celebrate Thanksgiving in June? Nope. But they do celebrate Christmas in July. It’s an escape from the harsh reality of…well, reality. 

Especially now, we need Christmas more than ever. After the Thanksgiving meal, what can you go another year without eating? Turkey. But I could eat Christmas cookies all year long. Thanksgiving serves as a reminder that Christmas gets closer and closer every day, and it should be treated as such: the halfway point of the Christmas season. 

Santa’s Overstaying His Welcome

It’s December 25th. You wake up to the same bright lights, overbearing smells, and annoyingly repetitive Christmas music that you’ve been surrounded by for what seems like a decade. You don’t care that it’s Christmas. It’s been Christmas for two months. You’re ready for this cursed holiday to be over with. If only there was a holiday that separates Halloween from Christmas…

Thanksgiving is often an overlooked holiday, but it is what keeps us sane during the holiday season. It serves as a nice segway coming from Halloween into the Christmas season.

Sure, Christmas is “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” but does leaving decorations out for two out of the twelve months in a year make it that special?

It’s true that Thanksgiving’s autumn hues aren’t exactly the most vibrant of colors, but it should be undisputed that fall is the most beautiful season and that we must embrace it to make it last. Seriously, who is looking forward to the next roughly four months of bone-chilling, freezing weather? We really shouldn’t be spending our precious time during the end of this beautiful fall season decorating for a holiday that is over a month ahead.

I believe that putting up Christmas decorations should be a family activity, and when is there a better time for family activities than during and after Thanksgiving? Also, wouldn’t it be more convenient to just get the decorating out of the way during your Thanksgiving break? November schoolwork combined with the pressure to decorate unreasonably early is a recipe for disaster; waiting to decorate during Thanksgiving break saves time and brain space. 

Thanksgiving feast is supposed to be the biggest meal of the year, so why would you want your meal spoiled with the looming spectre of Christmas in your dining room along with the overwhelming stench of scented pinecones? Thanksgiving is its own holiday and should be treated as such.