Acme Packing Company
Leave the holiday football to someone else.
Let’s get this out of the way up top: this is a selfish post. But I think that’s okay. I watch the Packers for my benefit, so I want watching the Packers to be as convenient for me as possible. Maybe that’s selfish, but I call it realistic.
That’s why I don’t want the Packers to play on Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. Or, really, any year for that matter.
The calendar’s ongoing movement has Christmas landing on a Thursday this year, joining Thanksgiving on that day of the week for this NFL season. That, no doubt, has the NFL’s schedule makers licking their chops. After all, they’ve got the greatest gift an entertainment conglomerate could want coming their way not once but twice this season: a captive audience. For two crucial Thursdays, the NFL can guarantee that a big chunk of the country is going to be at home with little to do other than fire up some football, whether their preferred team is playing or not.
But I’d prefer that my preferred team not have the honor of playing on either of those two days.
We all know the holidays are busy. There are tons of things to do and even more things to remember, even without the additional frustration of traveling or arranging your schedule around when your favorite team is going to play. And that goes double if, like me, you have young kids. I don’t want to have to figure out how to make sure I’m in a place where I can watch the Packers while also potentially managing the kids while on the road. Is that selfish? Yeah, probably, but it’s what I’m dealing with.
The Packers have played on Thanksgiving two years in a row, taking down the Dolphins in 2024 and the Lions in 2023. They had the unusual fate of playing two Thursday night games in a row last year. I know they’ll play at least one Thursday night game this year, but haven’t we suffered enough? Leave the holiday games for someone else. Let someone else have the dubious honor of being the sacrificial lamb for the NFL’s captive audience. Let the rest of us — me, specifically — focus on what’s important on these two great holidays: eating as much food as we can and then heading to bed early.
