 "Photo: Anthony Salinas / The Pan American")
What Happened to Thanksgiving? Halloween is over; Initiate Christmas Mode!
The second Halloween is over a bombardment of Christmas decorations, Christmas sales and Christmas cheer engulfs corporate America. Walking in to Wal-Mart before Oct. 31 you can feel the Halloween spirit, with the costumes, decorations and candy. But by midnight Nov. 1, its Christmas time! Wait…isn’t there something missing?
Its not that there’s a problem with Christmas making its way into our hearts and homes in November, its just, what about Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is the redheaded stepchild of the holidays. This might be explained if we look at our current economic situation. Consumer spending for the holidays is predicted to go down according to The NPD Group Inc. (formerly National Purchase Diary), which conducts consumer and retail market research. The annual holiday survey notes that 30 percent of consumers plan to spend less than they did last year, increased four percent from 2008.
To deal with this lack of spending, businesses hope to get people out and buying as soon as possible. This mean pushing aside Turkey Day, in order to get the big money from Christmas spending according to Mark Bergen, a retail expert at the University of Minnesota.
But Thanksgiving isn’t just a “food holiday” it is a holiday where nothing else matters but being together. It’s not jaded by the latest greatest video game, Barbie doll or new car (wishful thinking). There’s not a mini-moment of togetherness but a nice long weekend of food, family and football.
At least that’s how I’ve always seen it. When my cousins come down from Brenham, Texas for that one time a year, every year, that’s Thanksgiving to me. The times when we would take walks around the soccer field across my Mama’s (my grandma) house to let our food digest and then play football with the uncles in the front yard, those are memories I’ll always keep.
Or the childhood stories passed around the table of my mom and her six other brothers and sisters sitting around the Thanksgiving table that my Mama would painstakingly prepare (like she still does to this day). My favorite story is the one where my mom stabbed—not too hard of course—my uncle David’s hand with a fork, preventing him from taking food from her plate.
Family is such a core aspect of the holidays, but from what I’ve seen lately this century-old message seems to be getting lost among big businesses vying for your buck.
Now don’t get me wrong, gifts are a big part of the holidays. Black Friday, the ultimate shopping marathon basically, is known for sales and discounts that entice people out of their Turkey comas into stores.
This year though NPD Group Inc. predicts that, most consumers will start their shopping in early December, rather than on Black Friday.
If this is true, that most consumers won’t even start shopping until the Christmas month, why is the joy of Christmas being jammed down our throats two months in advance? Why must Thanksgiving be skipped just because it is not a money market holiday?
All I know is this: January is New Year’s, February is Valentine’s, March is St. Patrick’s, April is Easter, May is ‘School’s Out,’ June is start of summer, July is the Fourth, August/September is ‘School Starts’, October is Halloween, November is Thanksgiving, and December is Christmas. Period. Didn’t these corporate big-shots grow up with a proper calendar?
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