Vive La Thanksgiving

It’s the beginning of November. That pagan death festival is just behind us and Thanksgiving is most of a month away.

And yet our little town has their Christmas decorations up for some “Christmas in November” event. K-Mart is running ads on the radio about their November Christmas sales ending with “Merry November!”. Our local Christian station will begin playing 24 hour non-stop Christmas music on the day of Thanksgiving. The around-the-clock music is annoying enough, but their inability to wait until one holiday is over before beginning the next is even worse.

Of course, there is also that really annoying Garman commercial set to “Festival of the bells”. It has already began running and reminding me how much I don’t want to buy from a company that sees a Christian celebration as nothing more than a capitalist enterprise.

But Thanksgiving folks! What about Thanksgiving! There is a history here. Our nation sat aside a day for us to give thanks to God for his many blessings (one of which would be the kid in the manager a month later). It is a time for families to get together and eat way too much. It is a time for us to celebrate our heritage.

Thanksgiving should not be skipped!

My wise mother thinks that Thanksgiving should be moved forward to put more space between it and Christmas. I like the idea, but either way we ought to keep our holidays separate and whole. These days have meaning.

We’ve watered down the celebration of Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays to a one day President’s day mattress sale. Christmas is more about the unholy elf and his possessed reindeer. Resurrection Sunday has just been written off as a day for Wal-Mart to sale candy. Independence day seems to hold no more prevalence than communist, I mean, Labor day.

Can we Please keep Thanksgiving? Not as just the warm up to Christmas, but as it’s own distinct, independent holy-day?

Please?