ran to the store last night on a quick errand and, to my horror and dismay, they were playing Christmas music. Christmas music! already? NOT OKAY! it's not even thanksgiving yet. don't get me wrong, i love Christmas, and i love Christmas music, but not until thanksgiving has had its due. poor thanksgiving, always getting overlooked. sad face. i love thanksgiving. a lot. partly because autumn is my favorite season and partly because it's awesome! seriously, it's the one day a year you get to stuff your face and nobody can judge you. you are supposed to eat a little bit of everything and you are supposed to go back for seconds (or thirds, or twentieths...), plus the leftovers are amazing. what's not to love? i guess i shouldn't be all that surprised. thanksgiving has been fighting an uphill battle since the beginning.
what we think of as the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 when the plymouth colonists and wampanoag indians shared an autumn harvest feast. they probably did not eat turkey. from that point forward days of thanksgiving and harvest celebrations were held by individual colonies and later, states. nothing national. in fact, many parts of the country remained oblivious to the tradition for quite some time. centuries. in 1827 (206 years after the celebration in plymouth) sarah josepha hale decided it was time to spread the love and launched a campaign to create a national holiday. for 36 years. that's longer than i've been alive. in 1863 (now 242 years after plymouth) president abraham lincoln finally headed her request and, in the midst of the civil war, declared a national holiday. sort of. he entreated all Americans to all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” he assigned the last thursday in november to the task. it worked. thanksgiving had made it onto the calendar. fdr tried to move it once, but that didn't go over very well.
see what i mean, an uphill battle. and we've gone and made it worse. we've taken the one major holiday that has managed to avoid becoming an over-commercialized version of itself, and basically tell it it's not good enough. shame on us. i realize there is little to nothing that i we can do about the retailers and their attitudes towards the holiday i love so much. in fact, i kind of like that they haven't thrown thanksgiving on the lost-its-original-meaning bandwagon. the thing is, we shouldn't be so quick to join them in their disregard for this celebration. if you love me at all, or even like me a little bit, do me a solid and wait a couple weeks to start celebrating Christmas. do yourselves a favor and give thanksgiving the celebration it deserves. you can thank me later.
side note: if i had a horse, i would totally name it nelly.
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