Thanksgiving Comes First

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween.  After nine years living in a neighborhood where we literally had over 1000 trick or treaters every year it's strange to live where we usually only get the neighbor girl knocking on the door.  Last night we actually tripled that and had THREE sets of kids come looking for candy.  Now I'm ready to move on and consider Thanksgiving.

Last Monday, on October 25th, a particular coworker felt the need to announce to every patient who asked what date it was that it was two months until Christmas.  This information was not imparted in a matter of fact way or even in a wry manner.  Instead, said coworker hopped around like a preschooler who had eaten a bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs drenched in Red Bull instead of milk.  The first couple of times I thought she was putting it on, that it was a joke.  When she repeated the manic scene a dozen or so times it became annoying.  By late afternoon I was ready to bludgeon her since gentler suggestions of all holidays in their proper time had no effect.  In an attempt to be fair I wanted to warn her of her impending doom should she keep up the crazed elf routine.  I erupted in the following tirade:

It is not even October 31st yet.  That means we haven't even seen Halloween come and go, much less Thanksgiving.  Let me be clear. This week you are allowed to dance gleefully around the office in anticipation of trick or treating and eating yourself sick on all the Halloween loot you can stuff in a pillow case.  AFTER that you may become excited about Thanksgiving, which is the one holiday of the year that has very few commercial overtones since one is expected to gratefully reflect upon the blessings one already has enjoyed rather than getting hopped up on the season of gimme, gimme, gimme.  It's the the antithesis of what every marketing department works toward.  Not until the day after Thanksgiving will I even consider tolerating excitement about Christmas.  If you persist in this behavior I shall be forced to beat you senseless and truss you like a turkey, refusing to release you until you've learned your lesson.  She skulked away calling me a grinch.

Make no mistake, I like Christmas.  But I fell about Christmas the way I feel about snow.  It's a beautiful thing in its proper season.  In October it's just irritating, annoying and makes me angry.  Truthfully, I like Thanksgiving more than I like Christmas because, as mentioned in my tirade, it's naturally a time for reflection on our blessings and cultivating gratitude for them.  I don't like being hustled past something that meaningful and into the crass commercialism Madison Avenue has morphed Christmas into.  Though I will admit my delivery was somewhat Grinch-like.

So today, the 1st of November, in response to Suldog's request I am doing my part to stave off an early Christmas, which obscures the beauty of giving thanks.  If you're interested, here's the story of one of my favorite thanksgiving celebrations.