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.

Generations

A piece on pbs.org (here) asks whether the economic destruction wrought by the profligacy of the last decade has created a new lost generation.  Unemployment among twenty-somethings is up, marriages are being delayed, and a huge number of young people are opting to live with their parents after leaving school.  Aside from the rather dubious designation of the "lost generation" (wasn't Hemingway a member of the last Lost Generation?), the piece hits a nerve with me.  Our twenties are when we define ourselves; we're away from the influence of our parents, and its time to decide what we're going to be and whether we're going to be great at it.