1. Candy Canes. You could eat these minty hooked treats OR use them as actual canes for your younger sibling or cousin’s mangled Barbie dolls whose legs you broke off years ago. It’s cheaper and more festive than buying a new doll. Make sure the candy canes are still wrapped, or Barbie and Ken might get… sticky.
2. Wrapping Paper. You could recycle it in the blue bin OR use the crumpled up balls of festive trash as padding under your clothes. That way you’ll look like you gained more holiday weight than you really did and everyone will be impressed by your miraculous loss of it all when you eventually throw the paper out after about a week.
3. Wrapping Paper Tubes. You could recycle them OR use them to challenge friends, family, and surprised strangers to a duel! Sword fighting with cardboard tubes is way more fun than recycling them, and you might even burn off some of that turkey weight. Even pirates appreciate post-holiday cardio.
4. The Turkey Carcass. You could boil it to make turkey soup, give it to the dog to gnaw, or throw it out OR dismantle the bones and bury them under a thin layer of soil in the yard. Next spring, you can create your own archaeological excavation and freak out your neighbours.
5. Christmas Lights. You could painstakingly untangle them, neatly bundle them up, and stuff them back into their impossibly tiny box OR use them as a shimmering lasso to hypnotize and rope yourself a date! If used correctly, your Christmas Light Lasso could wrestle you a mate just in time for Valentine’s Day!
6. Christmas Cake. You could force down your mother’s annual Christmas dessert, carefully picking out the neon green and red fruits while attempting to not choke on nuts or break your teeth on the rock-hard dough OR take a brick of it and use it as a doorstop, paperweight, or hockey puck for a pick-up game.
7. Christmas CDs. You could pack them neatly away in their cases, never to see the light of day until eleven months from now OR tie some leftover ribbon through the holes and wear them as some giant bling!
8. Ribbon. You could untie the pesky knots, roll it up, and pack it away for next year OR use it with everything else on this list to create a marvellous Christmas Lasso.
