Thanksgiving - honored, not forgotten

I keep hearing people say that Thanksgiving is the "forgotten holiday." I think that in reality, Thanksgiving is the last man standing. Most of our holidays have been mercilessly ravaged by retail and marketing to the point that many people aren't sure why we celebrate them anymore. Poor Christmas got the worst of it. We have Christmas in July bazaars. Decorations hit the shelves in August and find their way onto rooves and lawns sometime just after Halloween. Christmas music haunts our shopping malls for at least 2 full months before Christmas day. And don't even get me started on the millions - make that billions - of Christmas events in December proper.

It seems like all of our holidays are becoming more and more like Christmas. I won't say the entire month of October is all about Halloween, but it's getting there. We carve pumpkins weeks in advance, pick out Halloween costumes in September, and start going to Halloween festivals as soon as humanly possible. Easter is headed in that direction as well. How many crosses do you see in the seasonal section at Target? Zip. But chocolate bunnies, Easter baskets in the shape of Power Rangers, and Peeps? Katie borrow the door. For Heaven's sake. We even have a creepy Easter bunny at the mall that terrifies children infinitely worse than jolly ol' Saint Nick.

But Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving stands alone. It needs no Hallmark commercials, no Wal-Mart catalogs reminding you that it's coming, no constant barraging to remind you to be thankful. It needs no countdown, no reminder that you only have X number of days to grocery shop for your feast, no giant festival in Time Square with a giant lit-up pumpkin to drop onto our heads to announce that Thanksgiving has arrived again. Perhaps that is because we do not celebrate Thanksgiving, we honor it. We quietly and gracefully give thanks in our own special ways. We change our Facebook statuses to tell others why we are thankful. We do turkey crafts after naptime and pick Indian names to put on our head bands. We have feasts with our friends and our co-workers. We follow our own traditions of turkey and dressing, even if your dressing is really, really weird.

I love my family's Thanksgiving traditions and to be honest (even if it is a bit embarrassing), I start looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner in April. It is a given that grace will be said, an entire can of cranberry sauce will likely be thrown into the trash, and the green bean casserole will be the first thing to go. I know that my mother will ask me, "What do you have to have for it to be Thanksgiving?" My answer never changes - candied yams. It's absolute law that you do not trim the tree or string a single Christmas light until the day after Thanksgiving. If you do not listen to John Denver and the Muppets while trimming said tree, well. . . that's grounds for dismal from the family. It is absolute law that you, under no circumstances, are ever to participate in Black Friday.

So hold your head high, Thanksgiving. You have stood the test of time. You do not need anything more than the meaning of your own name to carry on a true American tradition. You are truly a day to be honored and remembered - quietly, respectfully, and cheerfully.

So watch out, Mr. Turkey. You're going down. We've got some traditions to tend to.