On the drive back to campus Sunday, an unexpected sound came from my radio: Christmas music.
November had barely reached the halfway point and Thanksgiving remained more than a week away, yet a couple of stations were already dedicated to an endless loop of Christmas music for the next month. Thanksgiving hadn’t really even crossed my mind yet, but this radio station was already devoted to the next holiday.
As much as the preparation for holidays seems to shift earlier every year, I guess I should not have been overly surprised to hear chipmunks wishing for hula-hoops in mid-November. Christmas isn’t alone in having a long build-up; Halloween decorations and stores pop-up well before October, and Valentine’s Day barely has time to get out of the way before Easter takes over the shelves of superstores.
The longer relevance of the major commercial holidays seems innocent enough, outside of retailers trying to squeeze as much money as they can out of holidays, but the underlying consequences of this trend have the potential to become problematic.
As Americans supposedly spend Thanksgiving Day being grateful for their lives as they are surrounded by loved ones, it takes no time at all for them to fight through swarms of people as they battle for the latest Christmas shopping deals. Many stores have shifted away from opening at midnight the day after to as early as 8 p.m. the day of Thanksgiving in some cases.
The creep of Christmas to earlier in the year has now caused many workers to miss Thanksgiving night with their families, as they instead are called into work to satisfy the Black Friday crowds. I don’t think Christmas was ever meant to intrude on Thanksgiving, but that’s exactly what has happened.
This is especially disappointing because I feel that Thanksgiving has long been overlooked as a holiday. Abraham Lincoln originally coined Thanksgiving as a holiday during the Civil War as a reminder that even in the heartbreak and tragedy, there is always a reason to give thanks. That message is often hard to remember in the stress and rush of everyday life, making it all the more important to keep a day set aside every year to remind people how blessed the past year has been for them.
That message is in danger of being crowded out, though, whether through placing too much focus on the Macy’s Day Parade or the football games or becoming more concerned about the advertisements and deals in the newspaper. Christmas is a very important holiday in its own right, but the move toward it overshadowing Thanksgiving is not OK.
A major part of giving thanks is being content in current circumstances, and the steady stream of commercialism could not contradict that message any more. I find it admirable some people have started to take a stand against stores being open on Thanksgiving Day, but unfortunately, that will probably not be enough. There is plenty of time in between Thanksgiving and Christmas to finish Christmas shopping, and for the two to be so close together is unnecessary.
I hope that, in general, people would be able to look at their surroundings and be thankful for their lives, and that gratitude would be enough to reserve an entire day for spending time with people they are thankful for. The meaning and intent of Thanksgiving is truly special and is something that should not be diminished by people’s eagerness for Christmas.