MMR: Thanksgiving Season is Upon Us!

 Anyone who knows me or is a fan of this blog should know about my love of Thanksgiving.  If you don't, you should go back and read what I wrote last year (HERE), or the year before (HERE)*.

*If they look like the same post, they are!  I copied and pasted the same post a second year in a row, because no one seemed to care the first time, and like any good politician, I figure that if I say something enough times, it becomes the truth!

So, this year, I would rather not copy and paste the same plea for Thanksgiving to be respected.  It's time for new material.

I'm starting a campaign to rename the Christmas Season to the Thanksgiving Season!

First off, let me state the assumptions.  Assumption 1: Christmas is far, far more popular than Thanksgiving. 

So, yeah, I have quite a task ahead of me to discuss why a less popular holiday should be the namesake of this glorious season of little work and much partying.  Christmas is always a fun time.  Kids love it, adults love getting time off of work.  Christmas is a good holiday.  However, my last two assumptions will form the basis of my argument against Christmas as the more important holiday.

Assumption 2:  Christmas has become completely commercialized, and no longer means what it once did.  Assumption 3: Christmas is all about presents.

Right now, the entire year is based around Christmas.  Why is that?  It all boils down to economics.  More products are purchased over the month of December in preparation for Christmas than at any other point in the year.  Stores know this is their chance to get back to black for the year, and they hype it up something fierce.  The Christmas ads on TV have already started.  Hell, Thanksgiving weekend has become more about the Black Friday shopping day than the day that preceeds it.

Basically, by calling it the Christmas season, we are admitting that the most important part about a holiday is if you are going to get something.  If you are getting presents from people...if people are buying you things...then it is an important holiday worth spending your time talking about.  The stores, of course, help feed into this, as it helps their bottom line.  Gone are the days of Christmas being a time of families coming together and spending time with the ones you love.  That, my friends, has fallen to Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is a holiday, as I have discussed many times (see links above), that does not center around commercialism.  It does not center around getting gifts.  It does not center around rushing to the malls and spending a bunch of money.  It does center around the Three F's (food, family, and football).  It does center around bringing people together, if just for one day, just because you enjoy their company and/or appreciate them for being in your lives.  Thanksgiving is a holiday in which only one thing matters...those around you.  And that's enough.

Maybe that's why Thanksgiving is so overlooked.  It's too simple!  It does not have enough flair...enough pizzaz.  There's no monitary reason to talk about it, so it gets overlooked for the holiday that will make people more money.  Or maybe people just aren't as into family these days.  In an era of me-me-me, a holiday centered around what I will be getting from people is much more popular than one about sharing your time with other people.  Whatever it is, Thanksgiving is an all but forgotten holiday, and that makes me sad.

In the end, I think it comes down to what we would like to celebrate more.  Do we want to celebrate commercialism and greed?  Or would we rather celebrate spending time with your loved ones, sitting around a large table and sharing a simple meal.  One of those sounds far more appealing to me than the other...and, really, much more like something that should be appreciated as the namesake of a wonderful season.

-----------------------------------------------
Update:  I wrote this piece a week ago, and decided to hold off on posting it until the week of Thanksgiving...you know, so it's more relevant.  Anyways, I was walking to lunch later last week, and low and behold, the main shopping complex in Campbell was having a tree lighting ceremony.  The week before Thanksgiving.  Yes, they were celebrating the beginning of Christmas in mid-November. 

I swear, the whole world's gone mad.