By Krisna Kumar and Karen Chee

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There is an abundance of holiday dinner how-to guides. We’ve created the ultimate step by step guide for the best Thanksgiving (a.k.a. a preparation for Christmas).

1. Clean your home!
   It’s important to give your house a thorough clean so that it’s ready for all your relatives to visit. Mopping and washing can get kind of boring, though, so turn on some music while you clean to help the time pass faster! Like Jingle Bells or Deck the Hall.
   
2. Look up fun places to go for a walk in your town.
   You’ll want to get some fresh air, and what better way than a little walk to exercise after the big Thanksgiving feast? We recommend looking up some fun places to go for a stroll, like a park, or a pond, or a Christmas tree farm. To be clear… we’re not preparing for Christmas too early. That would be like me telling you to buy a Christmas tree, which is absurd. I’m just saying: you should be prepared.
   
3. Prepare to get cozy!
   It might get really cold at the end of November, so make sure you’re fully stocked with wooden logs for your fireplace. Also, people might want cozy clothes to stay bundled up , so while you’re at it, why not hang up some stockings in front of the fireplace?
   
4. Make Thanksgiving dinner place mats!
   This is always a great way to make the dinner table more festive. While you’re at it, why not make them red and green? The green is to honor the nature of Thanksgiving, and the red is so that you can’t tell when anyone spills cranberry sauce. No other reason!
   
5. Put up lights outside your house
   To be clear: not Christmas lights specifically. Just pretty colorful string lights so that your family can see them when they’re climbing up the steps to your front door. Who’s to say what holiday they’re for??
   
6. Hunt down your DVD of Home Alone in your basement
   Then just place it in your DVD player and pick up the remote. Don’t press play of course but gently place the remote right underneath your cat’s paw. If the movie starts playing, just blame it on the cat thinking the remote was a mouse.
   
7. Write down all the things you want for Christmas
   Totally just for the convenience of your friends and family. That way, they have over a month to go shopping. Plus, if you laminate and decorate your list, it’ll make for a good souvenir from their excellent Thanksgiving.

Process

We started off reading through similar comedy pieces published on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. After reading these pieces, we brainstormed ideas for our own similar piece. We went through various ideas like “How to Be a Good Sister” and “How to be a Perfect Student.” Since we both really enjoyed Christmas and were thinking about it even in November, we picked this as our topic. Karen and I each wrote our own separate list drafts and then combined them to create this piece.