Thanksgiving Thoughts

While doing some shopping recently, I noticed empty shelves in stores. They were empty because all Halloween merchandise had been removed. And it was slowly being replaced not with Thanksgiving items, but instead everything connected with Christmas.

My mind drifted back to when I was young and would be so excited about Thanksgiving. I so looked forward to Dad saying it was time to crack and clean the black walnuts we’d gathered in the woods. Because that meant Mom was getting everything together to make the special cookies and pastry that she only made for a holiday. Christmas hadn’t even entered our minds.

And now holidays are so commercialized. It seems as though the only thing thought about is money. How much money can be made from sales, who can get someone the most expensive present, buying the most sought after toys or the trending style of clothing.

Thanksgiving appears to be the forgotten time of year. It’s as though we go from Halloween straight to Christmas. Every couple of years, though, that train of thought is interrupted by elections.

Have we forgotten about being thankful? Not that we should confine being thankful to just one day out of the year. We should constantly be thankful for all we have, for all we’ve been blessed with. But neither should this very special day be pushed aside.

And so many of us are very truly blessed. We actually do have more than we need. Perhaps we should be sharing much more of what we have with those who have very little.

Somehow we’ve gotten away from the true meaning of holidays. We need to find our way back.