Are you shopping yet?

Yesterday marked the first Christmas Sale commercial I have seen. Some Best Buy Elves were hocking their 24 customer service on new electronic devices, even on Christmas Day.  I sat there on my couch and stared with embarrassment. How can they be running Christmas commercials already? There’s still seven weeks till Christmas.

It seems Thanksgiving is becoming a forgotten Holiday. And yet, it’s the most purely American of them all. The Autumn Feast that was held in 1621 between the Wampanoag Indians and the Plymouth colonists is regarded as the first Thanksgiving but it wasn’t until 1863 during the Civil War, that President Lincoln made Thanksgiving a National holiday.  He did it in an attempt to heal some of the wounds that the Civil War had opened. Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday to the fourth Thursday in November in 1939 to hopefully increase retail sales during the Great Depression.

With that said, the commercialization of Holidays is nothing new, but at least they tried to have Thanksgiving. I think more Americans should be aware of the significance of Thanksgiving and try not to gloss over it while rushing out to the mall to pick up the last gizmo or toy for little Johnny because he’s been so good this year, except for that time he tried to burn the playhouse down. It wasn’t his fault all those propellants and oily rags were laying around right when he decided to try smoking for the first time. He’s a good eight year old boy and deserves the best cell phone/transformer/laser pointer money can buy.

I think the instant jump from Halloween to Christmas just shows some disrespect for what it took to even have a holiday like Thanksgiving. There have been countless battles of principal and literal wars and lives lost in order to preserve the things we as Americans should be thankful for.

I also think that, in light of the recent elections, we again try to honor Thanksgiving a little more and remember the tremendous sacrifice our forbearers made to make this country what it is today.  The lives lost and the countless dreams that were forgotten for the betterment of a people and their nation shouldn’t be, bought, wrapped and shoved under a polystyrene Christmas tree. But they should be remembered with thanks and hearty gratitude and I suppose above all, respect.

Although 24 hour tech support is pretty sweet.