Thanksgiving, Schmanksgiving

The first nationally-sanctioned day of thanksgiving was designated as a day to celebrate the U.S. Constitution.  That only lasted a year, and then we went back to gorging ourselves on Turkey (of course, back in the 1700s, gorging yourself meant eating the modern caloric equivalent of a Happy Meal--without the toy.  You got half of the toy a month later on Christmas).

As for me, I have all kinds of boring family plans, constituted mostly of not talking about politics, remaining in general ignorance about our shared religion, and avoiding philosophy at all costs.  We might throw in not playing interesting games, which is the logical equivalent of playing boring ones.  Oh, yeah--we're going to snarf and guzzle hot, sweet, and savory tradition for six hours straight and then try to sleep off the idealized-history haze before the long drive home from Mom and Dad's place.

Let me take this opportunity to pimp National No Shopping Day (or Buy Nothing Day, depending on who you allowed to name the concept for you).  We celebrate the day after Thanksgiving by buying nothing all day long!  You can even start your celebrations early by buying nothing on Thanksgiving, too!  Some people like to follow up on Saturday with Buy Locally-Owned Only Day.

Now, I know there's a very popular post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas holiday that No Shopping Day has to compete with, and that this holiday is slowly taking over the 24 hours that we traditionally reserve for Thanksgiving and the much-lauded True Spirit of Christmas.  I would like to encourage everyone to give up that holiday (what was it called?  Black, Dark, Empty Void of Consumerism Friday--or something like that. . .), and to instead celebrate this day of good will, simplicity, and gratitude for the enormous mounds of junk we already have.

Happy Thanksgiving!