That lovely time of year has come around where everyone has switched from pumpkin spice lattes to peppermint mochas. Everywhere you turn, Mariah Carey's voice can be heard over the speaker, singing "All I Want For Christmas." Santa has been sighted in shopping malls all around the country, yet we have forgotten one very important part of out holiday preparation...Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for what we have, and the holiday has become more and more overlooked as time has gone by. We as a country continue to push our Christmas season earlier and earlier, making it overlap, or sometimes come before, Thanksgiving.
A prime example of this is Black Friday, with stores beginning their Christmas shopping deals on Thursday night when people should be home enjoying their Thanksgiving meals with their families, instead of trampling each other in pursuit of a Tickle Me Elmo. We have started to lose track of what it means to be grateful for what we have, whether it is our family, health, or simply the food that we have on our tables, and instead let the magic—or subsequent greed—interfere with the time we have with our loved ones.
I know plenty of people will argue that Christmas shopping is not selfish, and will probably start quoting "The Gift of the Magi" or some similar story, and they would be correct, but Thanksgiving is not the time to be thinking about what we want and "stuff."
When families gather for Thanksgiving, it is a time to engage in awkward "How's school?" type of situations. Although it may be uncomfortable to actually interact with another human being face-to-face, especially in an era of technology that takes care of that for us, we should enjoy this time while it lasts, and not just brush it aside with a series of dismissive one word answers in favor of watching "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" for the 15th time this afternoon.
At Thanksgiving, we should be with our family members and discussing all of the wonderful things—and possibly not so wonderful things—that have happened throughout this year, and take some time to enjoy each others company. In many cases, this will be one of the rare occasions in which a whole family will be together, and it is a time for us to cherish, not fast forward through.
