Thankcember

We have a new holiday in our house. I was going to say it is much better than Festivus, but honestly, it involves putting up the outside Christmas lights, so the Airing of Grievances is still a part of it.

Bob and I, shocking though it might be, both have tempers. And detangling rats nests of Christmas lights, only to find multiple strands that are only half lighting, working out the mathematical formula that will allow 20 plugs to converge into one socket, hanging off of the ladder to space things EXACTLY right (because SOMEONE is a little anal about perfectly spaced lights) . . . It's not Feats of Strength, more like Feats of Impatience.

Things went okay with the window "snow" . . .

But after placing the roof lights exactly 12 inches apart with individual gutter lights and then putting away the ladder, one blue light went out. And we had no replacements.

THEN, I got my little artistic bent going while Bob was away at the store getting replacement bulbs and created a tangle of old multi-colored icicle lights, knowing some of the bulbs were out, thinking a mound of them would still look cool, which led Bob to try to perform micro surgery on the fuses, and ended in me pulling everything off again . . . followed by the aforementioned Airing of Grievances.

But by nightfall, we had Peace on Earth. Or at least in our house.

The one rule we do agree on is absolutely no white lights, ever. Yes, they are classical and interior decorator adored, but they aren't Christmas to me. As a kid, everyone had the big multi-colored bulbs that could get hot enough to burn your roof down and you drove around listening to Christmas carols and looking for streets where not one house was dark. THAT's Christmas.

And thus, the birth of Thankcember.

So let it be written, from this year forward, Thankcember will take place on the first Sunday of each December, complete with turkey, dressing, and all the sides at the evening meal, preceded by (and perhaps to make up for) the hanging of the multi-colored lights on the house.

A big spread with all the Thanksgiving favorites, holiday songs on the iPod, is just the thing to sooth over the jangled nerves that Christmas decorating always seems to produce. Because honestly, earlier in the day "merry and bright, my butt" was probably uttered at least once.

Note where the spiced apples sit on the table ;)

And, just to mess with Bob, I stacked my seconds ala Gorden Ramsay. (I still need to work on my saucing technique. . .)

The joke here is Bob's reaction, having ordered meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans at Jim Croce's restaurant in San Diego, staring in amazement at the plate served him. Lowell asked, "Is something wrong" when he saw Bob's stare. "They stacked my food," Bob replied. I do admit, eating meatloaf at the Bad Bad Leroy Brown spot doesn't exactly scream fine dining, but his reply has gone down in the annals of "never live it down" remarks.

And thusly, some version of stacked food shall forever have its place at Thankcember.

(All rights reserved, and the creator specifically reserves the right to make changes, deletions, or additions to her holiday as the mood strikes her. And she, too, finds tinsel distracting.)