BY ERICA GUSTAFSON, OPINION EDITOR
After the spooky season of pumpkin carving, costumes, candy, scary movies and numerous parties, this year’s Halloween celebration has sadly come to a close. Right beside the season’s end, I have seen my TikTok feed change from Halloween costumes to Christmas music and decorations in the blink of an eye. This also is accompanied by the immediate switch of the holiday decorations across all store shelves.
In all honesty, I am one of those individuals that love the Christmas season and every single little thing about it. Yes, it goes to the extent where I start listening to Christmas music at the beginning of November and start to watch those corny Hallmark Christmas movies on television.
However, in all of the merry and bright, I can’t help but wonder. What about Thanksgiving? I question myself and others on this every single year. Why do we tend to push Thanksgiving to the back burner and sprint past it to that special Christmas feeling?
Thinking through each holiday of the year, I would consider Thanksgiving to be one of the most underrated holidays of them all.
Thanksgiving is time for families and friends to gather together and be appreciative and openly thankful for the year they have had, despite whatever the year has brought.
A lot of people might try to argue with me that the past two years have been a giant punch in the face. Even so, that does not mean that people should not celebrate and be thankful for the good moments and blessings that did come our way, whatever size of impact they may have.
Though the whole purpose of the holiday is to be thankful, as told in the name of the holiday, people really don’t remember that.
Today’s Thanksgiving holiday, more often than not, consists of people rushing through a huge meal in order to watch Thanksgiving day football, the Macy’s Day Parade or the inside of their own eyelids for a post-meal nap. This all is then followed by the popularized Black Friday tradition that is summed up by Kaitlyn Moore in a 2016 article on the odyssey online.
Moore writes, “The beloved American tradition of Black Friday. Where punching and tackling people to get the latest PlayStation game is acceptable. Or camping outside of Best Buy for the biggest flat-screen television is the most important thing that you can do.”
It is not a terrible thing if you enjoy all of these different events surrounding the holiday, but don’t make them the only focus of the holiday. It’s like we are constantly rushing through Thanksgiving because we are more focused on getting ready for Christmas that is over a month away.
Remember to be thankful this coming week for this past year and everything you do have right now. It has not been the best year, but you do have things and loved ones that you can be thankful for.
I read a quote the other day from Cynthia Ozick that really made me think about the coming Thanksgiving holiday.
It reads, “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”
