Brandi Adam, 33, woke up the day after Christmas, her head buzzing with holiday happiness.
Almost immediately, though, dread began to seep into her memory. She remembered it was Dec. 26, not the 25th, and that her Christmas Day had gone badly.
Ms. Adam, a second-grade teacher at McConnell Elementary School, explains that she had a disappointing Christmas on several counts.
"It's really all about family," she said in an interview early last week.
A Hurricane Katrina refugee, Ms. Adam had a flood of troubles Christmas Day. She missed her family (her mother died recently), her younger sister was far away in Connecticut (they had never been apart at Christmas before), and others in her life didn't share her Christmas spirit.
Ms. Adam's day-after-Christmas blues quickly turned into a resolve to set things right.
During an after-Christmas shopping spree, she noticed that she was piling up yard decorations in a shopping cart. Other shoppers began to raise eyebrows.
"Wow, you're sure getting a lot of stuff," one shopper said.
"Yeah, I've got half a mind to put all this stuff up in my yard when I get home," Ms. Adam replied.
Wait. That's it.
"At that moment, it was like a light bulb went off," she said. "I thought to myself: 'I can fix this.' "
In short order, Ms. Adam called her sister, Amber Wilson, in Connecticut, who agreed to hop in her car and come to Tennessee to help.
"I could tell she wasn't happy," Ms. Wilson said.
Ms. Adam alerted the media of her intention to redo Christmas three days late on Monday, Dec. 28, and then she got to work decorating her yard.
Neighbors, who were walking a dog, noticed Ms. Adam stringing lights outside when others were taking their Christmas decorations down.
"I'm not nuts," she called out to the neighbors. "I know Christmas was yesterday."
Ms. Adam was determined to rewind the clock to Christmas Eve when she was still flush with holiday happiness.
As a teacher she had worked hard to help her students empathize with their parents through a school project called Santa's Workshop. For a week, classrooms at McConnell Elementary in Hixson are set up like a factory. Students work and get a "paycheck" at the end. They learn about things like wages and taxes and Social Security.
By Monday, Ms. Adam was back in the Christmas spirit. She and her sister opened gifts and made a "Christmas" dinner of roast turkey, dressing and broccoli casserole. The sisters made a fire in the fireplace and played Christmas music on the stereo.
Ms. Adam was in high spirits when we talked on her Dec. 28 Christmas, as if she had just found a lost heirloom.
She actually did it. She moved Christmas -- just three days late and 50 percent off.