Forget Christmas, Save Thanksgiving!

Is it just me, or did the major retailers kind of skip over Thanksgiving this year?  It seems that at Target, Walmart, Starbucks, and so on, the Christmas decorations went up the day before Halloween, and that the Turkey day paraphernalia was relegated to a discount table in the corner, if it was displayed at all.  Interest in the holiday seems lower than any time in my memory - it seems like Thanksgiving should simply be re-named "The Thursday Before Black Friday".

It's a shame, because it's always been a favorite holiday of mine, since I was a kid.  Sure, it's not Christmas, with all the toys toys toys and greed greed greed; or Halloween, with all the candy candy candy and greed greed greed.  But Thanksgiving serves as a nice buffer between those two carnivals of self-indulgence.  Everyone sits together at the table with their families (however they choose to define them) and share in the fundamental act of community, sharing a meal.


That simplicity, of course, is why Thanksgiving is given ever shorter shrift by retailers: it's hard to capitalize on.  While Christmas and Halloween carry merchandising opportunities with them in wheelbarrow-sized loads, turkey, potatoes, cranberries, and football on TV don't provide much in the way of advertising traction for stores looking to move stuff.  Indeed, the whole premise of the holiday is antithetical to ethos of consumer society.  Mass media and corporate culture is built around making you think that you need more stuff, it is the cult of acquisition.  The impulse behind Thanksgiving is just that - giving thanks, being grateful for what we already have, looking around and saying, "you know, it ain't perfect, but life's pretty good". 

How will I be celebrating Thanksgiving this year?  I'll be letting the people in my life know that I am grateful for them, just as they are.  All the stuff we cram into our lives won't change who we are, no matter what they want you to think.  It will never replace the things in the world that we should be grateful for, like this:

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.