I Actually Really Like Thanksgiving

I was listening to a podcast about the first Thanksgiving and the hosts mentioned that nearly every credible civilization and culture has or has had a ritual celebration of thanksgiving, usually for a good harvest (no one ever mentions what people did on years when the harvests stank – boycott the festival? That’ll show your god or gods!). The hosts alluded to the idea that most of us nowadays aren’t thankful for good harvests in the literal sense (at least not that we’re aware of – we all are or at least should be thankful deep down for good harvests the world over), rather we are thankful for our health and happiness and families and whatnot, assuming we have all or part of those things. Our Thanksgiving day doesn’t run on the same schedule as any other culture’s thanksgiving festival, as far as I know, which leads me to believe that on that Thursday every November, we make a little show of ourselves and our turkey while the rest of the world has a regular day. That’s fine; they do the same on their own weekday holidays. I just wonder, with the rest of the world well aware of what we’re taking the day off to celebrate, how many of them really take us seriously? When the day on which we celebrate our thanksgiving was chosen by a president who gave into retailers desires to extend the Christmas shopping season. When the day after our day of thanksgiving some shoppers driven to lunacy by those same retailers and that same shopping season storm a Walmart and literally trample a man to death. I’m not saying that no one actually gives thanks or that the majority of Americans (I hope) weren’t sitting around eating and watching football like they were supposed to; you only hear about the planes that crash. But the ones that do when it comes to our culture are sometimes embarrassing.