“And now 24/7 Christmas music.”
Halloween was yesterday.
“Christmas! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
Ah yes, it’s beginning to look like Christmas indeed.
I’m sure we have all gone into a store the day after Halloween and all of the costumes are gone, the candy is on sale and all you can see are Christmas decorations.
We see this every year and as early as November 1.
I love Christmas just as much as the next person, but have we forgotten that we haven’t even gotten to Thanksgiving yet?
All some people care about is making it to the day after Thanksgiving for the Black Friday sales, to do what? Shop for Christmas presents.
Every year after my family eats Thanksgiving dinner, all of us, except for my uncles, sit around the dining room table at my grandmother’s house, and we look through all of the Black Friday sales papers. It has almost become a tradition.
Have we forgotten the importance of Thanksgiving and giving thanks to the things we are
grateful for?
Have we all become so filled with greed that we just want to skip straight to Christmas for the presents?
Have we all become so obsessed with Christmas shopping that we forget the day that we are
supposed to stop, and sit down at a table with our families with some delicious food to give thanks?
I don’t know the answers, I just know we completely jump over Thanksgiving these days. We know it’s coming, but we don’t really pay much attention to it until the day it gets here.
I remember when I was little, and you could walk into any given store after Halloween and see fall colors everywhere, pictures of giant turkeys, cornucopias and everything else Thanksgiving related.
Now, it’s Christmas trees, snowmen, mistletoes, Christmas lights and Christmas music playing on the speakers.
Our history books tell us that, in September 1620, a small ship called the May Flower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith. Other people were lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World.
After a treacherous journey that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River.
One month later, the May Flower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.
In 1621, they shared a meal with Native Americans that we know today as “the First Thanksgiving,” but, this First Thanksgiving wasn’t just one day of eating, it was a three-day festival filled with eating, hunting and entertainment in celebration of the Pilgrim’s first successful harvest.
That is what Thanksgiving is all about, giving thanks for the things that aren’t promised to us and never taking them for granted.
Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but I think we should stop worrying about Christmas on and spend a little more time focusing on Thanksgiving.
