Give Thanksgiving a Chance
On Halloween afternoon a few weeks ago, I was backing out of my driveway when I saw something totally unexpected.
“What the…” I said softly. My daughter, who was seated beside me, turned to see what I was staring at and gasped.
“I don’t believe it!” she squeaked.
Two doors down, my neighbors were busy decorating their house…
for Christmas.
And by ‘decorating,’ I don’t mean that they’d plugged in a Santa inflatable and called it a day. Oh no. When I saw them, they were carefully placing large wreaths on all the front windows of their house. By the time the sun set and the trick-or-treaters started making their way up our street, my neighbors had strung Christmas lights across all their bushes and wrapped them around their mailbox. They had strategically placed gigantic lit-up ornaments around their front yard. They had fully decorated not one, but TWO Christmas trees, which twinkled merrily from inside the house. And, in a nod to the actual holiday at hand, they’d left out a few jack-o-lanterns as well.
Okay, it wasn’t quite this elaborate– but it was close.
“Happy Hallo-Christmas!” I heard a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mutter as he walked by on his way to get candy.
For my neighborhood, this was an unparalleled breach of protocol. Traditionally, no one but no one puts out Christmas decorations until the day after Thanksgiving. Now, though, thanks to my neighbors, everyone is completely confused.
It wasn’t long at all before a ten-foot Christmas wreath appeared on the front of another house on our street– for the first time ever. A few days after that, the lady just across the way hastily tied a bright red Christmas bow to the rail beside her front porch steps– She hasn’t gone full-on Christmas yet, but you can tell she’s worried she didn’t get the ‘early Christmas decorating’ memo. Better safe than sorry, the bow seems to say. And two streets over, some Yule-frenzied residents have also covered their bushes and trees with thousands of colored lights.
“This is unacceptable!” I’ve sputtered to various members of my family each time I’ve seen another oversized candy cane or string of lights appear on the houses around town. “Christmas decorations go up the day after Thanksgiving! Period! Everyone knows this!”
And yet it seems that every year, more and more people seem to be flouting what was once a hard-and-fast rule. Hey. I love Christmas as much as the next person, but I can’t help but wonder…
Can’t we give Thanksgiving a fighting chance?
Thanksgiving has become the ugly stepsister of the holiday season. And frankly, I feel bad for it. Sure, orange-and-brown is not the most appealing color combination… and I don’t really like eating turkey all that much (let’s not even mention stuffing)… and I hate football, so TV’s out…
…and I feel completely betrayed by the fact that all that stuff they taught us about the Puritans and Native Americans feasting together in happy harmony was LIESOMGSOMANYLIES…
But I feel sorry for Thanksgiving, because there’s no way that it can ever compete with the lights and the music and the presents and the all-out pageantry of CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS. I mean, think about it. Have you ever seen people fighting over the last cornucopia at Michaels? Hell no. It’s sad, really.
Sure, I could keep quiet and let Thanksgiving eventually get devoured by the Christmas machine, never to be heard from again… but y’all. Thanksgiving is part of our history. Our heritage. We simply can’t let this important National Day of Gluttony fade with the passage of time.
So I’m calling upon you all now to give Thanksgiving its due.
Friends, Neighbors (ahem), and Countrymen, I call upon you now to take down your nutcrackers. Turn off your LED lights. And leave that flocked Christmas tree in your attic for just a little while longer.
CELEBRATE THE TURKEY, people, and get excited– THANKSGIVING IS A COMIN’–
No, there aren’t any presents…and the Thanksgiving songs pretty much suck… and the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special is admittedly one of the weakest of the Peanuts cartoons…
But let’s just think of all we have to look forward to next Thursday and GET EXCITED!
Here’s the list I came up with:
-fighting with family members we spend most of our time trying to avoid!
-stuffing our faces!
-feeling grateful that we don’t have to see these family members more often!
-stuffing our faces!
-watching lots of television!
-stuffing our faces!
-scouring the newspaper inserts for Black Friday deals!
-stuffing our faces!
-rifling through Grandma’s medicine cabinet for Valium Ambien Tums!
Did I miss anything? Oh yes:
-STUFFING OUR FACES!
Let us band together as Americans and fight back against the surging tide of red and green floodlights and inflatable snowglobes and grazing-lit-up-reindeer-with-heads-that-move! We shall face off against the lit Nativity displays, the evergreen topiaries, and the silk poinsettia mailbox toppers with a ringing battle cry of ‘NOT IN MY FRONT YARD!’
It is time for us to take back Thanksgiving, while we still can.
And it all starts with YOU.
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Christmas lights gif via Lovethispic.com; header image via Tim Sackton/Flickr Creative Commons
Thank you thank you thank you! I don’t admittedly don’t comment on posts a lot, but this “Halloween-into-Christmas” things has had me fired up for YEARS now! (I swear, I really do have a life…) Seriously: POOR THANKSGIVING… the most fun holiday of the year (no gifts required, all you need to do is eat…) BRING IT BACK. I’m with you woman. You’ll never see Christmas decor at my house until Dec 1… http://www.TheFabMom.com
I do prefer when Thanksgiving is earlier in the month so that the Christmas decorations are out longer, but… it is what it is. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, I feel like it would be weird to eat Thanksgiving dinner in a Christmas-themed house! 😀 Glad to know I’m not alone.
I agree with you on everything but the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving – we love it.
I love all of them, but this one is probably my least favorite of our collection. 😀
Every year my husband bugs me about putting up the lights outside before Thanksgiving. Every year I say NO. Not because I’m a Scrooge, but because IT’S NOT CHRISTMAS YET. And the sooner we get out the Christmas decorations, the longer we have to police the two-year-old who thinks they are all toys.
I LOVE Thanksgiving. I love what a low-key holiday it is. All we have to do is cook (which I love cooking too), show up, eat, and then lay around being lazy. When else do we get to do that????
I must admit, my Christmas lights are all strung up around my fence outside: but they’re NOT lit up! And won’t be until December 2 (not sure why, but that’s always been THE DATE at our house). But I’m also in Minnesota. On the prairie. And it gets mean-cold and windy out here! So putting up lights too late means the potential loss of fingers and toes and really puts a damper on that “Happy Holidays” atmosphere! Especially this year, when we got 12″ of snow on the 10th (lights went up on the 9th – thank you weatherman). I do agree that the plastic snowmen and bows and such need to wait. What bothers me most this year, is that stores aren’t even waiting for Black Friday anymore. With stores opening at 5PM on Thanksgiving Day we don’t even get to enjoy our dinner with family; because they have to work so others can spend their day of giving thanks for all they have by running out so they can have more!
My family and I are firmly in your corner. I’ve even heard threatening mutterings about “accidents” with the turkey fryer, but names shall be withheld to protect the innocent. I really don’t have a problem with the lights and stuff being up on the house, as long as they’re not turned on until after thanksgiving. And really, who can afford the extra electricity it’s going to cost to have them on an extra month?
Our outside lights are up but they are not on!! We usually put them up the first week of November. If we don’t the house & yard are covered in snow & ice. They are never turned on until the Sunday after thanksgiving. Come on people! Also note to the radio stations … We do not need Christmas tunes on Halloween night!
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I cringe at the mere thought of the 100% Christmas music FM radio station being played everywhere, in mid to early October thru mid January–I am not kidding. I am straight-jacket-ready upon seeing the pre-Halloween “Christmaween” decor–the lit-up-and-flashing-visible-from-the-Hubbel-Telescope type. I also can’t abide seeing festoons and garlands of spruce hanging from the small-town street light poles and the grocery store entrances in mid-October. These very same “offenders” are usually the ones that leave that same once-fresh stuff up till it is in rigor mortis–sometime around Easter, as a rule of thumb. DId they forget it was there? Because I’d be happy to help yank it down……….And now I’m going to restrain myself from sharing my annual RANT against RED PLASTIC BOWS……AAAAAACCCCKKKKK!!!!!!!!
Hanging my head sheepishly. I’m putting the tree up this weekend but I have a good excuse. I have hand surgery on Wednesday. I want to sit and look at my decorations while I recover.
Note though: We will be heading down to my in-laws on Thanksgiving and revel in all that we do on that day. Yep give it’s full due
You get a pass! 🙂
Don’t get me started. I was at Whole Foods today for 5 “real things” that I needed and there was a BIG Christmas wreath on the side of the parking lot, Alvin blaring “all I want is a hoolahoop” and two stock guys in conversation that went something like…”I hate that song almost as much as the dogs” to which the other guys started barking “Jingle Bells.” in perfect key, I might add. Then once in line 4-deep, the woman behind me asked if she could crowd me on the conveyor belt because she was late for her kid’s hook-up…because the line was so long. “What’s going on she asked?” And I really had to think…is it close to Thanksgiving or is it Christmas? I really just want to sort of check out (pun intended) until January.