If you’re anything like me, the Christmas holiday preparations have a way of sneaking up on you. Perhaps you have found yourself in some rather humorous situations that you care not to repeat. In an effort to help everyone out, I have started a list of some “Holiday Don’ts.” Feel free to share some of your own.

Some of these are from personal experience while some are hilarious stories I came across online. And, no, I will not embarrass myself by telling you which is which.

HOLIDAY DON’TS:

• Don’t wait until the day of your holiday dinner to thaw your turkey. Turkeys do not thaw well in microwaves and often don’t fit at all.
• Don’t wait forever to take your real tree down! Do you know what happens when you take down a real Christmas tree around February or March? When you move it, all the dried up pine needles fall off, long before you get to the door. Pine needles impaled into the carpet cannot be vacuumed and you’ll be picking them all up by hand.
• Don’t go shopping for gifts without first having someone else double check your list or available bank balance or you may end up not having enough money for food.
• Don’t mail all your Christmas presents ahead of time before you fly to your in-laws for the holidays. Something could happen at the last minute causing your flight plans to be changed and you spending a ton of money getting all those gifts mailed back home where they started.
• Don’t decide to move an already decorated tree across the living room because it might look better in a different spot. If you do try to attempt such a feat, you may hear the tree crack in half while you are still under it and terrible, terrible things can happen in that moment.
• Don’t ever hide Christmas presents in black garbage bags or they may actually be mistaken for garbage, and you will not be singing Christmas carols as you are attempting to chase down the neighborhood garbage truck.
• Don’t feel so ambitious that you decide after Thanksgiving to hand paint all your Christmas gifts, especially if you are a procrastinator and nine months pregnant. You will end up exhausted and frustrated when you’re juggling a nursing baby in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.
• Don’t forget to wrap your presents ahead of time because you may forget some of your gifts and try to sneak some already opened gift bags to wrap your presents in. Someone will definitely notice and you’ll never live it down.

Finally, DON’T forget what the Christmas season is all about. Don’t take for granted the time you have with your family because not even the perfect gift, the perfect meal, and the perfect decorations will matter in eternity.

Here’s one for you: Don’t ever try and get tricky by putting numbers on your packages instead of names. I’ve been told that it’s much too easy to get them mixed up.

The recipient really doesn’t appreciate having to give away their gift once they’ve opened it. The element of trying to keep gifts a surprise until the very end can definitely backfire. Ask me how I know!