This Thanksgiving you could very well be preoccupied with thinking about shoving stockings full of trinkets instead of your face with food.
With Christmas signs, sales, and decorations around malls and other public areas, it seems we’ve all forgotten Thanksgiving; a holiday about just the opposite.
For the Grinches plotting to steal Thanksgiving, go no further than Target, Borders, Sears, Best Buy and Wal-Mart. With light-strung trees, colorful ornaments, and the general color-pattern of red, white, and green — all of the following chain stores have Christmas-themed decorations blazoned across their online homepages, putting the stamina of our holiday cheer to the test.
Most retail businesses say they get as much as 30 percent of their sales from Christmas shoppers. The website eMarketer is dedicated to providing retailers and consumers with market statistics, research, and analyses and predicted a 12.7 percent increase in online spending for this year’s holiday season, which could explain why corporations are so eager to cater to the virtual shopper, earlier than ever and by any means necessary.
We as a nation don’t really have that many quality holidays. Among the likes of Easter, Christmas, The Fourth of July and Veterans Day, Thanksgiving is a really standout holiday that brings the family together for a big meal and some quality time. Most of all, Thanksgiving is a holiday focused around just how amazing of a thing it is to give thanks to your family and enjoying each other’s presence, rather than opening their presents.
And what would our holiday season be without Thanksgiving? Without it, we would have no way to hint at possible gifts from our visiting relatives in order to get our finalized shopping lists ready. You know, giving you a chance to find something that could ease your Aunt Clara’s third divorce or informing you that your little cousin has given up soccer to form a rock band, on the game Rock Band. Thanks to Thanksgiving you can eat leftovers for close to a week, maybe a little more if you don’t mind the smell, and you can spend the time working off all the weight you’ve gained by chopping wood and walking laps around the mall while pushing a new stereo system for the husband or 17 new pairs of shoes for your girlfriend.
It’s not to say that Christmas isn’t important, but like many have said before me, it shouldn’t start until after Thanksgiving. Its allotted time slot has grown to become more of a season than one day.
Props to Hannukah and Kwanza; those holidays have done a great job of keeping their consumer base under wraps and building anticipation from an appropriate post-Thanksgiving time period. Keep up the good work.
Remember that when it comes to a quality holiday like Christmas, longer doesn’t mean better, and inversely, the same goes for Celine Dion’s Christmas album, “These Are Special Times.” Play it once, and stash it far, far away for next year’s festivities. Or, better yet, just throw the CD in the fire with the used wrapping paper.
Shelby’s favorite leftover meal is cranberry and turkey sandwiches. E-mail him yours at shmoore3@asu.edu
