Opinion
Thanksgiving skipped over
November 17, 2006
November marks the unofficial beginning of winter. Halloween is over and the atmosphere goes from slightly brisk and chilly to icy, snowy and damn cold.
With the new frigid atmosphere, focus seems to shift on the upcoming holiday season. The stores begin to fill up with Christmas ornaments, wreaths and lawn decorations. Commercials for holiday sales fill TV screens, and parents ask their kids what they want from Santa this year.
It seems that something is missing in all this hype.
I went last-minute Halloween shopping a couple of weeks ago looking to find some accessories to finish off my rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. When I walked into Target, I was appalled. It was three days before the spookiest day of the year, and the Halloween section had already been cleared out and replaced with gigantic snowballs and singing reindeer.
Isn’t there a holiday in between Halloween and Christmas?
Oh yeah, Thanksgiving.
In the past couple of years, one of the most arguably important holidays in our nation’s history has been skipped over.
A time to get together with family and friends to smile, laugh and thank whomever or whatever we may believe in for being blessed with health, love and happiness. A time to eat a large amount of food, drink some wine and pass out for the rest of the day.
So why does it suddenly seem so unimportant?
Thanksgiving isn’t a flashy holiday. There are no pretty lights, no lavish gifts to be bought from designer stores and no extravagant holiday parties. Thanksgiving is kind of blah, and for a generation that is obsessed with stimulation in all forms, a day where the point is to sit around and actually talk to real people doesn’t really make the cut for cool holidays.
Retail stores have realized this and taken full advantage of it. While watching my favorite show, “Deal or No Deal,” I counted eight commercials for Christmas presents and sales.
Thanksgiving is slowly being weaned out because people are obsessed with things and have forgotten the true holiday spirit.
There is not a lot of money to be spent on Thanksgiving.
It just isn’t fun anymore, especially for members of the ADD generation, who have been exposed to so many types of stimulation that the mere thought of sitting down in one place for more than 10 minutes tweaks them out.
Christmas is a lot more exciting.
Christmas involves cool things like presents and cookies and presents.
I love presents just as much as the next person, but holidays are supposed to be about spending time with the people that you love. It seems that they have turned into huge, expensive spending expeditions that stress people out more than cause them joy.
The loss of a fruitful Thanksgiving is a sign that our culture has become extremely obsessed with flashy and material items (presents if you will). Any holiday that doesn’t involve these things gets left in the dust.
Rebecca De Neui is a student at UW-River Falls.