Thanksgiving is here. Yet, given the decor, the music, the gleeful discussion, one could question if there even was a holiday between Halloween and Christmas. Few don’t notice Christmas decorations and merchandise begin invading store shelves before Halloween even comes.
There was a time in my brief life thus far where November had very little in the way of Christmas. Halloween would come and go, and though there was a buzz in the air of the pending holiday season, nothing was seen of Christmas until Thanksgiving when we saw the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then, on Black Friday, it miraculously appeared.
I always enjoy Thanksgiving. Although, in a way, it sat as a kickoff for the Christmas season, Thanksgiving was its own thing. It was a holiday about family, friends, and food. It was a holiday about being thankful (even while knowing when I was younger the idea appeared foreign). Lately, I feel we’ve forgotten about it.
With all the excesses of modernity, an observer might be inclined to see the society of the US as spoiled and ungrateful. And even if the actuality of the statement isn’t fully accurate, it is at least so directionally. We are moving that direction — rapidly — if we aren’t already there.
Gratitude is a practice, almost a skill if one thinks about it. Because of how we are wired as creatures, resource gathering is a natural behavior. We aren’t meant to necessarily pay attention to what we already have, rather to see what we want or need. In other words, we pay attention to what we don’t have. It is only when needs are met that it seems we are able to think. Think of the concept of Hierarchy of Needs put forth by Abraham Maslow.
Unfortunately, it seems like we’ve been hacked to think we have more needs, even when, if we were to be honest, they are more than met.
So why is it we don’t feel like our needs are being met?
Reasons abound. Simplicity in this arguments simply doesn’t exist. Multiple factors all coalesce to bring us where we are. And because there are so many reasons, so many individual course corrections needing attention, it is easy to fall victim to the mentality that if we just push forward, if we just get that one more thing, it’ll all work out.
Christmas started to represent our modern ailments sometime in the last decade or two. Sure, it was heading there in my own lifetime, always a delicate balance between gleeful, hedonistic greed — the childish want of gifts — and ideas behind the Christian holiday: giving and family. I realized we reached over that tipping point when one year as we drove back from where we had Thanksgiving dinner with friends (as we live too far from family), we saw massive crowds of people waiting in line outside Target, Walmart, and other stores. On Thanksgiving. During during the window of hours that dinner should be on the table. Why?
I remember being in a relationship where my significant other loved to go out during the late hours of Thanksgiving/early hours of Black Friday to wait in line for stores. Apparently, even then it was something of an event. Even still, Thanksgiving was never missed. No one thought even for a moment it would be. Now? Who has time for Thanksgiving when there are sales to be had?!
We live in a fractured society in deep ailment. We’re being taught not to appreciate our friends and family, but to be suspicious of them. To judge them harshly lest they might judge us. We’re told we deserve big screen TV’s, tablets, gifts, and gimmicks rather than being taught to find purpose and meaning in life. Material want is replacing spiritual need.
No, Thanksgiving isn’t some miraculous holiday with deep roots of centuries of tradition encoded into culture — that’s Christmas. But this isn’t really about Christmas. That’s for tomorrow. Today, it is about the possibility of leaving a little space for some gratitude. That’s what Thanksgiving is supposed to be about. In the space of a big meal and the heated family discussions, we’re supposed to take a moment — a simple moment — to consider something we’re thankful for. To recognize there’s something we want that we already have.
If there is anything I am asking for here, it is to put Christmas aside until December (or at least until the day after Thanksgiving). I ask that we leave a little space between the holidays of candy and gifts to recognize what we have to be thankful for, however small it might be. Let us celebrate for a day and practice that oft forgotten skill of gratitude.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
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