The oldest running gag in my family starts every year on the day after Thanksgiving and lasts until Christmas morning. It drives my daughters crazy.

"Well what do you know," I say, as the holidays approach. "There's an extra week before Christmas."

"Oh Dad, please stop," shoots back Firstborn, rising to her favorite argument. "Look at the calendar. Christmas is on the same day every year. The number of days are the same."

We never get beyond that. It's one of those jokes you say to hide a bittersweet, private truth. Fact is, I prefer a little more time to the holidays. If I can pack five fun weeks into a month — even if it's just in my head — that's fine with me.

There is so much to enjoy about the holidays.

The warm smiles. The twinkling lights. The gifts. "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Even the annual fight over whether the family tree is standing straight is something to savor.

The overall affect on my life is palpable. For weeks my home looks like the victim of a Christmas grenade.

Wrapping paper is stacked on chairs, snippets of ribbon on the floor. Ornaments are hung on everything from shelves to the tree. Lights are strung inside and out. And Mrs. G. opens her own little cookie factory — this year, she went through 20 pounds of flour and eight pounds of sugar.

Christmas is the happiest day of the year for a lot of people, myself included. But the problem is, the day after gives me the holiday blues.

Every holiday season, amid the joy and spilled flour, I struggle to understand that.

It would be easy to think of it as a kind of holiday hangover from the chaotic days of shopping and wrapping, but I've felt this way since I was a teenager, alone in the living room of my parent's home on the morning after Christmas.

This is as close as I've come to a conclusion: Inside this grown-up exterior lives a wistful little boy who isn't sure he wants to open the next present because that's one present closer to the end of Christmas.

"The lights come down and everything gets boring," Second Daughter said. "All the fun stops."

That's it, of course. The best part of Christmas comes before Christmas. No other time of year feels that way.

With so much to anticipate — from the parade of lights on every street to the stream of cookies going out my front door — it's impossible to feel anything but empty when the celebration is over.

I can cope, though. I'm an adult.

I tell the inner child to take a hike. I pack up the lights and carefully stash them in a closet. I grouse about the mess Christmas made of my house.

Being grumpy is a pretty effective cure for the holiday blues.

Maybe that's why I need an extra week every year. Gives me time to find my inner child and wish him a Merry Christmas.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.