As I am sure you all remember, this weekend was the girls' weekend in North Carolina for my cousin Megan's bridal shower. In summary, the weekend was just fabulous. I drank lots of tea, saw my grandparents, ate way too much crap, and mostly just sat in my aunt's living room chatting with my family, bridesmaids, etc. A lovely weekend.
Aside from Megan's shower, which was a Pampered Chef party with some really excellent food, the highlight of the weekend was Friday's Christmas show. Its actually the "Southern Christmas Show" or something like that, and it basically was hundreds of vendors selling stuff in three huge warehouse-type rooms. I bought some delicious fudge and something else I can't say because it is a Christmas gift for Andrew. There was tons of stuff there--food, jewelry, crafts, clothes, but I didn't see much else that struck my fancy that I could also afford. I got lots of great ideas though. We spent almost 5 hours there, which was a bit much for me, Megan, and Emily. By the third room, it basically all looked the same, and we were dragging. But the moms had fun, so rock on.
The thing I will probably most remember about the show was the entrance. It was basically Christmas overload--tree trimming competitions, wreathing decorating competitions, dining room, fireplace, all kinds of decorating competitions. Some of the stuff was absolutely ridiculous--like the tree with blue lights that was wrapped in Saran Wrap--that just doesn't do it for me. Plus there was oodles of Christmas music and elf toy shops and junk like that.
Call me old fashioned, a grinch, a scrooge, whatever, but I simply cannot abide by Christmas before Thanksgiving. This year I saw ornaments in Kohl's before Halloween, for Pete's sake! Out of control. Its like Thanksgiving isn't even a real holiday anymore, just a perfunctory celebration that we get out of the way to make room for even more Christmas junk. I don't even like Thanksgiving that much, but come on now, people! You can't just skip holidays! You can't just decide to stop celebrating something! Imagine 50 years from now. We will be old people, sitting in rockers and knocking our grandchildren on the head with canes, saying "Back in my day, we used to celebrated Thanksgiving!" And our stupid little grandchildren will look up, momentarily stop beating their little brother and say, "What's that grandma?" And we will have to explain all about pilgrims and Mayflowers and Native Americans and turkeys. I ask you: Is this what we want?
Do we want to lose our American heritage? Do we want to forget about the one day of the year when it is acceptable to stuff your face so full of food that you actually pass out into a food coma? I mean, really, what's more American than that? How can we skip the one holiday that celebrates what America truly is?
I say, stop the madness! Let Thanksgiving have its time in the sun! Normal little kids already like Christmas way better (as they should). Can't we at least give Thanksgiving the consolation prize of actually being celebrated? I mean sure, its an inferior holiday, but even things of inferior quality deserve to be acknowledged. We don't sweep N*SYNC under the rug, simply because JT's solo career took off, do we? No! And neither should we neglect Thanksgiving.
Plus, sans Thanksgiving, we are a culture deprived of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And if nothing I have said thus far has moved you, that in itself should.
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