Have Yourself a Merry Little Turkey

Christmas does not start until Black Friday. Call me stubborn, but I do not want to weave through Hallmark decorations or sit in coffee shops hearing "Chestnuts roasting..." unless Thanksgiving has come and gone. This year, as is appropriate, we will have exactly one month for carols. November 26 through December 25. And if you croon "Away in a Manger" or "The Twelve Days of Christmas" after the New Year, more power to you. Epiphany (when the Wise Men met Jesus) lies twelve days later, on January 3.

I had "Silver Bells" stuck in my head this week; what a nuisance. Octogenarian Santas may already be jingling outside Wal-Marts, and the weather's turning toward the chill. But the lyrics state, "It's Christmastime in the city," and that is a falsehood before Turkey Day. We are about to endure thirty days of full-frontal, last-chance-for-holiday-shipping, buy-it-now marketing. Unnecessary to jumpstart the madness.

Greeting card vendors and music sellers need some product to carry them after Halloween, in the waning days of autumn. I propose we compose some Thanksgiving songs. A holiday stuffed with food and family deserves some musical dressing as a complement. (Perhaps from the Cranberries.) Forging new Thanksgiving songs this late in the game would be impractical. Let's reconstitute the Christmas songs already trapped in our heads so that they will be seasonly apropos:

O Come All Ye Family (to "O Come All Ye Faithful")
O come all ye fatties,
Gorge on mashed potatoes,
O come eat, O come eat
All Aunt Bea's kitchen.
Come and we'll roll thee
Home, you king of gluttons.

Happy Turkey to You (to "The Christmas Song")
Turkey roasting on an open fire,
Jack, your uncle, nibbling on your yams.
Tiny tots with their seats at the kids' table,
And folks dressed up like anachronistic pilgrims.

No More (to "The First Noel")
The first Thanksgiving, Columbus did say,
Was to certain poor Indians in slaughter as they lay.
No more, no more, no more colonization,
Born is the king of eradication.