Have yourself a merry little ______________

It’s that time of year again. The air is redolent with the aroma of spices wafting from baked goods. Candlelight flickers. Friends and family gather to celebrate and reminisce.

And the sound of Thanksgiving carols can be heard in the land.

Pardon? You weren’t aware of the existence of Thanksgiving carols? You may as well say you don’t know about the Great Pumpkin!

Anyone who knows The Prude knows she is a Thanksgiving purist.

No Christmas  tree, Christmas TV, Christmas cookie or Christmas carol will step foot across her threshold until the day after Thanksgiving.

So over at The Prude’s, with it’s pumpkin-pie-spice redolent aromas and it’s flickering harvest-scented candles and its anticipation of Thursday’s Gluttony-With-Loved-Ones,

you will hear Thanksgiving Carols.

If you doubt for a moment that there is such a thing, take a minute to peruse the playlist. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to see how many songs you can find.

I recommend listening while eating something that has either turkey or pumpkin as its main ingredient.

-Over the River and Through the Woods

-Come Ye Thankful People Come

-We Gather Together

-Turkey in the Straw

-Shine on Harvest Moon

-Let All Things Now Living (A Song of Thanksgiving)

-Everybody Eats When They Come to My House

-Theme Song from ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving’

-For the Beauty of the Earth

-Praise and Thanksgiving

-Now Thank We All our God

-I’ve Got Plenty to be Thankful For (Bing Crosby)

-Thanks Be to God (from ‘Elijah’)

Oh, The Shenanigans We'll See!

When the Prude was eight she saw ‘The Music Man’ for the first time. It was on TV and her parents considered it wholesome entertainment, unlike the Jackie Gleason Show with its scantily clad dancers.

The Prude saw ‘The Music Man’ for the second time yesterday.

It was on TV and she considered it perfect entertainment to do ironing by, unlike the Brewers or Cubs games with their scantily batting players.

And somewhere between pressing the dress shirts and the khakis

it hit her like 76 trombones.

She has out-pruded her parents.

The Prude was shocked by the shenanigans in The Music Man.

-The staid librarian/staunch heroine doesn’t respect a mother’s wishes to control her own daughter’s reading material.

-Women of questionable virtue are exalted in an entire song.

-Teens are allowed—no– encouraged to have clandestine meetings with members of the opposite gender and without parental approval.

-Unchaperoned youth meet with members of the opposite gender at a footbridge. At night.

-Singing occurs in the library.

-The staid librarian/staunch heroine’s mother wishes out loud that the staid/staunch librarian/heroine would throw herself at a man. Any man will do.

-The heroine/librarian who is staid/staunch convinces the town to believe the ends justify the means regarding Mr. Music Man the Lousy Cheater.

Then, proving that naughtiness begets naughtiness, she tells the flim-flamming Music Man to ditch town before he is tarred and feathered.

AND SHE DOESN’T TELL HIM TO FIRST RESTORE THE MONEY HE CHEATED FROM THE SIMPLE TOWNSFOLK.

This is what The Prude was subjected to during her formative years at the tender and impressionable age of 8. What was her mother thinking?  Allowing an impressionable child in the throes of her formative years to see such roguishness?

Maybe she had been to busy ironing to notice.