It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or is it? Depending on who you ask, it’s already the Christmas season. The day after Halloween, it seems that the spooky decorations are being swept away in favor of festive Christmas lights and decorations. Radio stations are already playing Christmas music. For the people that are skeptical about starting the Christmas season at the start of Nov. they prefer starting it immediately after the Thanksgiving dishes are put away.
In the midst of it all, we have to wonder. Is Thanksgiving becoming the prelude to Christmas? Does it still have a place as a celebrated holiday, or is it just a small part of the Christmas celebrations now? It’s becoming harder and harder to find turkey-themed decorations or even Thanksgiving-themed celebrations throughout the month of Nov. Why is it that we’ve decided to minimize the significance of Thanksgiving?
It could be part of the shifting culture around Thanksgiving. With each passing year, people are becoming more educated on the backward history of the United States. For most generations, they grew up believing that Thanksgiving was a friendly truce between Native Americans and white settlers where they put aside their differences and became allies. However, more people, especially members of Generation Z, are realizing the truth about the relations between Native Americans and their colonizers.
It was never a friendly alliance or one where they co-existed peacefully, but rather a volatile and violent relationship. To celebrate the arrival of white colonizers and the destruction of Native American lands and culture is offensive. People who reach that understanding struggle to separate the holiday of Thanksgiving from its history of colonization and the destruction of Native American culture. The compromise they reach is treating Thanksgiving as the start of the Christmas season.
Another possibility is that Thanksgiving is just not a money-making holiday like Christmas. There are only so many plush turkeys and “Give Thanks” dish towels Target can sell. On the other hand, Christmas is the most marketable holiday on the planet. There’s no end to the number of Christmas decorations, ugly sweaters and cheesy songs a company can sell. That doesn’t even take into account the amount of money just one person spends yearly on Christmas gifts for others. Nobody buys each other Thanksgiving presents. In the eyes of a businessperson, the Christmas season can’t start soon enough. If that means sweeping Thanksgiving under the rug, then so be it.
Or maybe we, the general public, just want to feel the warmth and joy of Christmas a little sooner. We jumpstart the Christmas season because we’re so eager to start singing carols and putting up the Christmas tree. With all that is going on in the world right now, who could blame us? Christmas is a source of joy and beauty for many people; it’s a time to celebrate and decorate and be with family. Turning Thanksgiving into Christmas Part One could simply be a result of the desire to celebrate something.
Whenever you decide to start celebrating Christmas, it’s up to you. Whether you prefer to start the day after Halloween, the day after Thanksgiving or literally on Christmas Day, what matters is finding joy and celebrating with your loved ones. If you decide that Thanksgiving does not have a part in that, that is fine as well. Thanksgiving should be celebrated in whatever way each person sees fit.