Sleigh, Queen, Sleigh: A collection of Christmas puns

‘Tis the season. For what, you ask? To chug eggnog, don cozy Christmas sweaters, and, most importantly, pester your relatives with the cheesiest holiday puns imaginable. Christmas only comes once a year, after all, and you only have so much time to squeeze in your last festive jabs before people start tearing down their Christmas lights and start prepping for the next holiday. Allow me to get the (snow)ball rolling with a few examples.

1) Wrap Party

A central part of the holiday season is sitting down with a bunch of gifts, turning up the Xmas tunes, putting Nick Offerman’s Yule Log on the TV and wrapping presents until your hands hurt. The second that my parents realized that I no longer believed in Santa, they dragged me into their bedroom, locked the door, and piled my brother’s Hess truck toys in front of me with wrapping paper, glad they could finally shift their Santa duties onto another person. Over time, I grew to love this new tradition, these “wrap parties” that involve nothing but wrapping gifts for the people we love.

2) Holly Day

I know that “holiday” originates from the old English word hāligdæg meaning “holy day” but it seems like more than a coincidence that the entire month of December is filled with references to “holly,” one of the plants that is famous associated with Christmas. If we start calling Christmas “Hollyday” we can finally give up the act and start calling the other holidays like they are: Halloween becomes “Candyday.” Thanksgiving, Foodday. And Easter? PastelColorsDay.

3) Sleigh, Queen

Every other month of the year, it’s acceptable to write “slay, queen, slay” on every YouTube video of Adele but when Christmas rolls around, it practically becomes a sin to not swap “slay” for “sleigh.” When the set up for a pun is that perfect, how could you ignore it?

4) Wreath Witherspoon

If you haven’t seen the picture of Reese Witherspoon’s face plastered all over a door wreath, you haven’t fully experienced life. I don’t know how you would integrate this pun into regular conversation, though, unless watching Four Christmases is part of your family’s yearly Christmas routine in which case, more power to you. Thanks Mindy Project, for the inspiration.

5) Snow Good (So Good)

Honestly, I’m surprised that none of the department stores have used this play-on-words for their parody jingles yet. Maybe they haven’t really thought up any worthy ideas yet. If that’s the case, let me give you a freebie: “Snow good! BAM BAM. Snow good! BAM BAM. I need you! BAM BAM BAM BAM BAMMM.” What’s even better about “snow good” is that its connotation can go either way: you can use it as a replacement for “so good” or “no good” as in “this measly Christmas tree is snow good, I tell you.”

6) Elfie

You’ve heard of shelfies, belfies, and (ugh) felfies but what about elfies? Elfies takes a millennial trend and makes it festive by encouraging people to take photos with their favorite “elf.” Just be careful around high-powered children’s books executives who may take offense to your request to take an elfie with them. (Yes, this was an Elf reference. Thanks Buddy!)

7) Ornamentary

I’d like to believe that in an alternate universe, there exists a detective named Sherlock Holi-homes whose sole purpose is to bombard Watson with Christmas puns. “Ornamentary my dear Watson” would serve as the primary joke and would eventually drive Watson to give up Christmas forever, turning himself into the modern-day Scrooge.

8) Ho-ho-horrible

Obviously, you can swap out horrible with a much nicer word (might I suggest ho-ho-wholesome) but my word-nerd brain was craving alliteration and horrible is the only adjective I could think of. There are plenty of things you could apply it to, though. “It’s 64 degrees on Christmas, how ho-ho-horrible.” Or maybe “my cat knocked over the Christmas tree and left grandma ho-ho-horrified.” Let me know if you  have any better suggestions.

9) Rude-olph

I read a theory once that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was actually a villain, that the other reindeers didn’t invite him to play Christmas games because he wasn’t a good sport. Whether or not these theories are true is unconfirmed, but if you wanted to use the “rude-olph” pun, you could cite Rudolph’s hypothetical bratty behavior.

10) Claused (Closed)

With all of the businesses closed on Christmas Day, you would think more people would take advantage of this pun opportunity. You can easily slap “Claused for the holidays!” onto a sign with a cute Santa drawing and make your day off that much more festive.

Featured image via Fox.

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