To put it bluntly: I'm not a fan of Thanksgiving. To me it's essentially trying to force families to get together and eat a lot of food; something that should happen without having to make a holiday for it. Don't get me wrong, I love that we get days off of school, but the whole idea of Thanksgiving seems ridiculous. Wikipedia aka the most trustworthy source ever says that "Thanksgiving was a holiday to express thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation to God, family and friends for which all have been blessed of material possessions and relationships". Shouldn't we do this already? Do we really need a holiday for it? Is it just something businesses like to make into something it's not to get money? It's just like Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc where it seems like it should be something that's always celebrated; not to the extent of getting your mom/dad a present every day, but the same idea of appreciating them every day. Nothing is really special on the day itself that those holidays are on, but everyone makes a big deal about them.
And where did the idea of having a huge amount of food and having to eat leftovers for weeks afterwards come from? I think it's just businesses trying to exploit consumers: "celebrate stuff by buying a bunch of food from us". Plus the whole concept of forcing family together is just stupid. If families don't want to do stuff together any other time and only meet up for Thanksgiving then it doesn't seem genuine. On the other hand, if there was no Thanksgiving, a lot of families probably wouldn't organize anything and there would be less of a... family feeling. Putting an entire family together doesn't even seem like it's a good idea. There's always some sort of argument between at least two people in the family. And if it's bad enough there's the decision on who to invite and if you should take the chance in inviting both of them and hope they can hold off their fighting for just one day.
Also, according to the highly-accurate Answers.com, "Thanksgiving was established as a National Holiday by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. In the proclamation President Lincoln specified that the last Thursday of each November should be set aside as a day to give thanks for the founding of our nation". Why does Thanksgiving always have to be on a Thursday? I'm not so sure what's special about Thursday or November, but there’s no way of knowing (at least not now because my brain can’t handle any more research right now). When you word it like the way Answers.com does, it seems like Lincoln just used Thanksgiving as a way to increase nationality at the time of war, and since then it's been warped into celebrating family, not the nation.
So my idea of Thanksgiving: Be super nice to your family on every Thanksgiving and leave them with the impression that you’re awesome. And when you only see them on Thanksgiving every year, it’s just a one day façade you have to put up once a year. Try to forget for one day that most of them couldn't bother to even send a birthday card to you to let you know they still care and after that you can drop the act.
I'm getting worse and worse with these posts and trying to make them coherent.
My goodness this is a sad post. Sure you don't need a holiday to give thanks and spend time with family or whatever, but what if there weren't any holidays? I think they're like time benchmarks that give some meaning to the cyclical months of the year. And face it, giving thanks and honoring your parents are not the first things on anyone's mind on a normal day. Holidays set aside a specific time to remember those things. And I think a lot of families would never get together if it wasn't for Thanksgiving, which even though they may argue and not even like each other, would be pretty sad. I'm sorry you feel that way about it ;_;
ReplyDeleteWell yeah I mean Thanksgiving is nice and all but it's kind of sad that we have to have holidays to be able to get together. And Thanksgiving this year was much better than it usually is xD
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