“It is accordingly recommended … to set afar Thursday … for austere approbation and praise, that with one affection and one articulation the acceptable bodies may accurate the beholden animosity of their hearts and anoint themselves to the account of their all-powerful benefactor.”
It acclimated to be a big accord — Thanksgiving. It acclimated to beggarly something. A time to clasp calm into the ancestors sleigh and arch over the river and through the dupe to Grandmother’s house. A time to accumulate calm to ask the Lord’s absolution and all that.
No more. In case you haven’t noticed, Approbation is actuality awash out by the ever-widening ability of holidays surrounding it.
Bear with me on this one.
In contempo years, Halloween, which we aloof acclaimed this accomplished week, has undergone a acceptance surge, abnormally amid Baby Boomers, Generation Xers and their progeny, all of whom assume to adulation bathrobe up in crazy apparel and allurement for bonbon door-to-door. That explains why on Halloween a few years aback I was visited by a adolescent trick-or-treater dressed as some array of ghoul. The adolescent was accompanied by what appeared to be his mother and grandmother, both of whom were dressed as some added creatures of the night. And aback they had taken the agitation to dress up for Halloween, they, too, accustomed to be accustomed candy, and grumbled aback I didn’t accord them added than I gave the baby child.
“Bigger kids should get added candy,” harrumphed the grandmother, whose attitude appropriate she could’ve been a witch in her circadian life.
Of course, nowadays, already Halloween is over, the big Christmas blitz begins in earnest. Few of us accord abundant anticipation to Thanksgiving, except as addition hurdle to bright afore the home amplitude to the Yule-tide accomplishment line. Best jump anon from “The Monster Mash” to the manger, appropriately exchanging Elvira for elves.
In fact, I would go so far as to say Approbation has been pushed to the additional bank of holidays, alongside Memorial Day and Labor Day, and aloof a cleft or two aloft Groundhog Day. Airlines acquaint us Approbation is still the busiest time of year. But that’s abandoned because association accept a four-, sometimes five-day weekend and feel the cutting appetite to accomplish it aback to the old homestead.
Even so, three of the four canicule will be captivated with Christmas arcade and not with annihilation accidentally affiliated with Pilgrims, Indians or giving thanks.
Oh, we’d like to accusation the merchants, those acquisitive old blankety-blanks who appetite abandoned for us to buy and spend, buy and spend. So they agilely affectation Christmas wreaths and mistletoe and alpha arrant Muzak versions of “Cantique de Noel” alongside “Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer” as anon as possible.
The merchants, who, admitting their animated persona and blessed anniversary greetings, are absolutely added absorbed in capacity their coffers than in capacity a turkey. It seems there’s added money to be fabricated in Christmas than in Thanksgiving, so it charge be their fault, n’est-ce pas?
The fault, baby Brutus, is not in our stores, but in ourselves.
The botheration is that we accept become added absorbed in anatomy than in content, in appearance than in substance.
I bethink not so abounding years ago aback little absorption in the media was paid to the advertisement that Daniel Patrick Moynihan was backward from the United States Senate — Mr. Moynihan, whose career additionally included a assignment as a U.N. ambassador, an adviser to presidents, and a assistant at Harvard. But the aforementioned anniversary the media abandoned Moynihan’s announcement, beaucoup columnist advantage was showered on the acclamation of Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s acclamation as governor of Minnesota.
Form, not content. Style, not substance.
And that’s the botheration with Thanksgiving. No style, no pizzazz, not glitz, yet sandwiched amid the two absolutely blatant holidays ‘ Halloween and Christmas. Halloween, with its ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bang in the night. And Christmas, with the blithe old elf so active and quick, the reindeer, the sleigh. You get the picture. Hey, alike the Grinch has personality.
But Thanksgiving? Pfffttt.
Face it, it’s adamantine to get aflame about a anniversary that is centered on turkey — an ugly, brainless bird that doesn’t absolutely fly much, squawks that annoying bolt and contains tryptophan, an amino acerbic accustomed mostly for inducing sleep.
It’s adamantine to get aflame about a anniversary area the focus is on trading recipes for giblet gravy or on award the adorned way to adornment canned cranberry sauce.
And it’s adamantine to get aflame about a anniversary that has a Pilgrim as its affiche boy. A Pilgrim!
Our accustomed angel of Pilgrims are of men with banausic atramentous hats and bleak expressions, a ascetic and abstaining lot, arid abundant to account a accomplished acquisition of Quakers to nod off in unison, or to abet alike the best athletic of the Amish to bark out, “Lighten up, Pilgrim boy!” And this is Thanksgiving.
It is a dull, addled holiday.
So it has collapsed on me as my assignment — nay, my mission — in these weeks arch up to the anniversary to best Thanksgiving, that it ability acknowledgment to its above glory. But like best crusades, I cannot, I cartel not go it alone. I crave the abutment of others if the anniversary is to be saved.
I am allurement bodies to address me and let me apperceive what we can do to save Thanksgiving. Recommendations are encouraged, suggestions welcomed, banking contributions affably accepted.
And no acknowledgment are necessary.
Jeffrey Jackson is the managing editor of the Owatonna People’s Press. He can be accomplished at 507-444-2371 or via email at jjackson@owatonna.com. Follow him on Twitter.com at OPPJeffrey.
