Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was a holiday all its own. I remember my mom even putting up Thanksgiving decorations, the likes of which are probably only seen at a few elementary schools these days. We had die cuts (some of which would now be highly offensive), tissue paper turkeys, and lots more. I think we even had a cornucopia with autumn flowers in it. But that’s not the point. The point is that we actually celebrated Thanksgiving as it’s own holiday.
This weekend, I watched a few college football games. If you judged solely based on the commercials seen, you’d think we were in mid December instead of early November. Everything was Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, which makes no sense when it’s still nowhere near wintertime. I’m okay with the winter holidays, but I’d appreciate it if we could contain them within the winter season, or at least December.
Thanksgiving is getting smashed like a disused mall just because it’s in the way of the moneymaking machine that is the Christmas season. It used to be the starting line for Xmas - now Halloween is. As soon as Halloween wrapped up, my local Target had completely eradicated it in favor of fir trees and jingle bells. What was so weird was that it practically happened overnight. It took their slow-ass staff most of October to eek out their Halloween section in fits and starts, but that Xmas department was up and running in microseconds as soon as the jack-o-lanterns were extinguished. Ready…Aim…Xmas!
What’s wrong with relaxing and giving Thanksgiving its due? Autumn is my favorite time of year, so why not enjoy it? I plan to.