Hopefully the title of this blog post has you considering something that I have noticed more and more of over the past few years: the decreasing focus on the Thanksgiving holiday in attempts to fast track towards Christmas. I currently live on a college campus where Christmas Lights are being displayed, the library is covered in snowflakes and Christmas Trees, and everyone's Pandora seems to be streaming some Michael Buble version of a favorite Christmas tune. (Don't get me wrong, I'm all about some Michael Buble) But, that's not the point. The point is, what about Thanksgiving??? It's November 16th and the most conversation I can get about Thanksgiving is whether someone is serving Turkey, Ham, or both. Thanksgiving, which I am considering renaming the Forgotten Holiday, or something else dramatic, is being a shoved aside more and more each year and this trend made me take a moment and consider why this is occurring. I have two ideas on why this is taking place. Firstly, I believe that commercialism has a big role to play. Thanksgiving is not an easy holiday to commercialize. There aren't parades (besides Macy's), costume parties, trees to decorate, or door to door caroling to do as there is with the Christmas season. Besides Thanksgiving dinner itself, and perhaps some fall decor, Thanksgiving just isn't as big of a moneymaker as Christmas. How many billboards, TV ads, and radio commercials do you notice promoting Thanksgiving? How many schools, churches, and civic organizations put on productions celebrating Thanksgiving? The best thing to ever happen to Thanksgiving, from the consumerism perspective, was Black Friday: a day which, like everything else after October 31st, is geared towards Christmas. I believe all of this ties in to my second and more fundamental idea of why our celebration of Thanksgiving is so often stinted; that is, Thanksgiving is a holiday designed to remove ourselves from the heyday of consumerism and to have true, heartfelt, gratitude for everything we already have. Can you imagine a radio blurb telling you not to buy a new tempur pedic mattress but rather be grateful that you aren't one of the millions of people sleeping on the ground? Can you imagine a grocery store's ad campaign encouraging people to make do with what is already in their cabinets and give thanks that they aren't amongst the millions of people who didn't eat today? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy receiving and giving gifts but I feel as though the consumerism is impersonating as Christmas spirit and we are buying in (literally) to the idea that adding to what we have is the key to making ourselves, our friends, and our families happier than we are. However, if we take a moment or two, or maybe even a whole day to truly reflect on the abundance that already overwhelms us on a daily basis, I believe we would value Thanksgiving so much more and take this holiday as an opportunity to remember what the important things really are.
As someone played their Christmas today, I commented that it was little early. They replied that there wasn't any thanksgiving music. So, here's what I propose: make your own Thanksgiving music. From this moment forward, as we celebrate the season of thanks may every word you speak be a song of gratitude, may every action produce a melody of appreciation and as you join hands and hearts with others to reflect on your blessings may your combined joy be a harmonious anthem of thanks.
Blessings,
Bethany
