Publix makes really disturbing holiday commercials.

There's the Thanksgiving one with the pilgrim salt-and-pepper shakers (which never fails to anger Karen, because the salt shaker acts as though the dog licking it is a worse fate than being manhandled and cast to the floor by an evil infant).

And there's the Evil Christmas Ornaments commercial, where the "angel" atop the Christmas tree facilitates the theft of a family's celebratory comestibles by shorting out the lights, permitting the other decorations to pillage the dinner table under cover of darkness.

But the latest Thanksgiving commercial was really creepy. At the beginning of the ad, a child writes "Happy Thanksgiving Grandma" on a leaf with glitter paint. Suddenly, a gust of wind sucks the leaf out into the world, where it floats (à la Forrest Gump) into another family's house, where it lies until an elderly woman picks it up and reads it amongst the bustle of dinner preparations. Does she turn to the child in the room and thank him for the thoughtful message? No, she does not.

Instead, the music turns ominous as the woman walks outside into a shower of falling leaves, to the wonderment of her family, who draw together to watch her exit the house.

What the hell? Why does the music turn ominous? Was Grandma's exit from the house into a cascade of dead leaves symbolic of her dying on Thanksgiving day? Or did she suspect the leaf was placed on the table by a deceased grandchild, rather than by the living one who was present? There's nothing visually threatening at that point, so why the melodramatic accompaniment? Why the modulation into the minor key, why the suspenseful chords?

And why does Publix have this obsessive need to turn holidays creepy?