Top 5 Best Ways to Spend the Day After Thanksgiving (Without Shopping)

Thanksgiving seems to be America’s forgotten holiday given that it’s sandwiched between the increasingly popular Halloween and the not-here-quick-enough Christmas. That doesn’t mean that it’s still not a relevant part of our society–just forgotten. Most people look at Thanksgiving as the day before the Christmas shopping season begins, and others see it as the annual Detroit Lions get-beat-a-thon. Fortunately there’s always the day after Thanksgiving, and here are some alternatives to getting up at 2 in the morning to go stand in line at Target for a toaster for your brother-in-law’s second cousin.

5. Sleep This is the obvious choice since everyone has either been up for 24 hours cooking, or driving to see family and relatives. All that tasty, tasty tryptophan the turkey loads us up with helps for the day after, too. Most people have the entire weekend off, and that entitles us to just a few more hours in bed the next morning, or a much needed nap for that Friday after. Those of us that do have to work the Friday after Thanksgiving are probably going to be calling in anyways, unless you’re one of the lucky ones that has to sell that digital camera over the counter to Suzy Shop-a-lot.

4. Hang Christmas Lights Unless your name is Scrooge or you’re under the age of 5, Christmas lights should be on your house and what better time to display them than the day after Thanksgiving? You don’t have to be one of the crazy, competitive people that spend hundreds of dollars a month on electric bills because your house is plastered from top to bottom with icicles. Just put some lights on that bush next to your house and-bam! you’re in the spirit of the holiidays! The day after Thanksgiving usually isn’t too cold to do this, however you probably don’t want to procrastinate much further, though. Snow and wind chill factors are right around the corner and you know you don’t want to hear your spouse nag you to get those darn lights up in a blizzzard!

3. Clean This goes without saying. Normally most people will have the gigantic family gathering with millions of plates to clean and billions of silverware to wash. Even if you did just have a small gathering, there is usually a huge amount to clean, whether it’s the dishes or the stain of cranberry sauce on the carpet your drunk father made after he got down off the chair (rather un-gracefully) from putting the star on the top of the tree. Dive in there and help clean! And when that’s all done, and you don’t have to go to work, finish up that Spring Cleaning you promised yourself you were going to do in March–just call it “Holiday Cleaning!”

2. Volunteer Ok, so this may not be the most popular thing in the world to do on the day after Thanksgiving, being that we’re all fairly selfish Americans, but it not’s going to kill you to go downtown and donate some time at a soup kitchen. Perhaps you’re the kind of person that has all your Christmas shopping done and wrapped and the Thanksgiving dinner is all over and done with and all your family is on their way home and your Christmas lights are all hung and you’re not tired. Does this sound like you? Then get downtown and do a good deed, Mr. Perfect. A good old fashioned soul-smile never wears off too easy.

1. Make Amends This means apologize. You know who you are. As soon as you said that snide remark about your Great Aunt Bertha’s horrible reindeer sweater, you knew you shouldn’t have said it. As soon as you swiped that last deviled egg off the plate before your cousin Bernie even had one, you knew you shouldn’t have. As soon as you told your–well, you get the idea, right? Whenever family gets together for whatever reason there is usually someones feelings getting hurt. The day after Thanksgiving is the absolute perfect time to correct this while the offense is still fresh in everyone’s minds and you know you need to fix things before Christmas (because, chances are, you’re probably going to get into it all over again!).

There you have it, folks–the definitive list of things to the day after Thanksgiving if you don’t want to get up at the crack of dawn to get that holiday special deal.


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