Thanksgiving is the unimportant middle child sandwiched between the two objectively best holidays, Halloween and Christmas. With November now upon us, it’s only a matter of time until someone poses the age-old question “It’s only November, why do I only see Christmas stuff?”, to which I respond with a short but controversial statement, “Thanksgiving sucks”.
First, let’s talk about the origins of the holiday. As early as elementary school, we are told the story of the first Thanksgiving when the pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe came together for a celebratory feast after the tribe had taught the pilgrims how to grow and collect their own food. It’s a happy story about people coming together to help each other and having a nice meal. However, what always fails to be mentioned is the war that broke out between the Wampanoag and the New England settlers not even 50 years after the first Thanksgiving. Today, Native Americans in this country are not given the treatment they deserve and the first Thanksgiving is just a reminder of that.
On a less serious note, Thanksgiving is also during an awful time of the year. As I mentioned, it falls in between Halloween and Christmas, so after October is over, you are forced to take down all of your fun, spooky decorations and put up boring, fall-themed ones. I mean switching out your jack-o-lanterns for normal pumpkins should be a crime. November, in general, also has poor weather, so most of your Thanksgivings fall on windy or rainy days where it’s cold but not cold enough for snow or drinking hot chocolate. The result is having to trudge through November, waiting for Thanksgiving to end so you can celebrate the most wonderful time of the year without judgment.
Defenders of Thanksgiving often say that Thanksgiving is so great because of the food and the time you spend with family. I personally think that this is a dumb argument. What do you do on Christmas? You eat food and spend time with family, but you also get presents, Christmas movies, and banger music. Often, Thanksgiving and Christmas have the same types of food anyways, so I don’t look forward to Thanksgiving anymore since I know I will get the same meal in one month but with the addition of fun Christmas things.
I hope lovers of Turkey Day finally reject the worst holiday and embrace the best one. In a perfect world, November is a month when people slowly start listening to Christmas radio and decorating to pregame for December. But, for now, I’ll just drown out the Thanksgiving festivities by blasting “All I Want for Christmas is You”.