nobody asked…

Thanksgiving…my favorite holiday. Why, you ask? Let me count the ways.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a time for seeing and visiting with friends and family, including some that you may not see but once per year. To balance the one or two that you would just as soon not see at all, there is always that favorite uncle or nutty cousin or old Mrs. What’s-Her-Name from one block over, the one who brings a plate of the most scrumptious fudge you’re ever eaten. This year for the first time, I add a new dimension to that circle of special friends — those who walk with me through the blogosphere. Family and friends…most definitely one of the reasons Thanksgiving is special.

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. … The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. — Ayn Rand

At least according to legend and tradition, the original Thanksgiving was a time for the early settlers to gather at the end of the fall harvest, prior to the onset of the harsh winter to follow, to celebrate a successful growing, hunting, and fishing season with a lavish meal and revelry. Then it was more a community event than the familial gathering to which it later evolved. Yes, on this, Ayn Rand was correct.

On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment — halftime.
— Anon

For a football junkie like moi, Thanksgiving weekend is OD waiting to happen. Making sure you have a firm grip on the remote, put on Macy’s Parade in the morning to appease the kids and the non-gridiron crowd, then settle in for 4 days and nights of wall-to-wall action. During a halftime later in the day you can show how helpful you are by running the turkey carcass out to the trash can.

Perhaps by the time I recycle this piece next year my research will have discovered some thoughtful or humorous quotes appropriate to the following thoughts on why Thanksgiving is special.

+ For most of us, Thanksgiving is the only time of the year that we take a 4-day holiday. That is so much more rejuvenating than a normal weekend or an isolated day off in the middle of the week.

+ No gifts to select, buy, wrap, give, exchange. No pressure. No stress. Good!

+ Thanksgiving does not have the heavy Christian underpinnings of Christmas. As a result, there is little if any controversy by factions of varying faiths and religious affiliations. The fundamentalist bickering that has developed around Christmas has darkened the real message of hope and peace and new beginnings that defined what Christmas was supposed to be about. Thanksgiving brings that peace.

To all who come by here regularly and to those who got lost and ended up here by mistake, I send wishes for a most healthy, safe, and enjoyable Thanksgiving day and weekend…