Where are you Thanksgiving? (Revisited)

So, I had just finished a rocking good Halloween time, and reunited with some old friends. After I had taken them home, I turned on my radio. It was midnight (so officially November 1st) and what do I hear playing on the station??? Christmas music!!!!!! What???? Are you kidding me??? Oh, and I definitely exclaimed this out loud in my car because I was in complete and utter shock. We haven't even finished off the halloween candy or taken our costumes off and we are already expected to start thinking of Christmas. Hello! We still have another holiday (and month for that matter) before Christmas! I know I discussed this on my xanga last year, but I decided it was time to revisit the article I wrote. Why? Because quite frankly I am mad. I enjoy Thanksgiving and it gets pushed aside like a scrauny kid waiting for his turn on the slide. Commercialism has turned one of my favorite holidays (and that is Christmas) into something that it should have never become: all about presents, and gifts, and money. It's about Christ's birth and celebrating that fact. Thanksgiving gets the short straw, and the raw end of the deal by many because, there is no buying of gifts or money to be had except for maybe the grocery stores. It's sad. Anyway, here's the "article" I wrote last year:

Where are you Thanksgiving?

Now that Halloween has come and gone, and we all have enough candy to last us for quite some time, what’s the next major holiday? I would assume it would be Thanksgiving, right? I was surprised to walk into the BYU Bookstore to find that my suspicion was wrong. Everywhere I looked there was garland with red and green bows, wreaths, and other Christmas merchandise. Even one of the radio stations has already begun to play Christmas music 24/7. What ever happened to Thanksgiving? I do feel very sorry for this much overlooked and sometimes forgotten holiday. When even searching on the internet, I found there were 49,808,107 more matches for Christmas than for Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas and all that comes with it as much as the next guy, but it seems like Thanksgiving really doesn’t matter. It just gets lumped in with the “Holiday Season,” and we go from Halloween to Christmas or the “holidays.” I asked a fellow peer, Brittany Bowcutt, what Thanksgiving meant to her, and her reply was, “I get a lot of food.” Many other people when asked the same question respond similarly. Some reply food, football, turkey, sleeping, no school etc. Few, if any, answer being grateful, or about the background of this holiday. Thanksgiving is an integral part of the history of the United States. In 1621, the Pilgrim’s that had settled in the New World had had a successful, wonderful harvest after a very hard year. They had made peace with the Indians nearby, and they had enough food to last them through the harsh winter. This feast of harvest and of thanks became a tradition, and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln made it official and declared this day of Thanksgiving a national holiday. I really do enjoy Thanksgiving, and it is not just because of the food or the parades. Having a day specifically set aside to think about and truly ponder everything in this world that we are grateful for is wonderful. How often do we think of all the things that have blessed our lives? I know I have thousands of things I should be grateful for, and I am grateful that I have Thanksgiving to think of all them.