Thanksgiving Lite

I’ve written so many Thanksgiving blogs that I’ve run out of ideas for a new story to bring you. Instead I’ll refer you to my best year for Thanksgiving blogs, 2011. Check those archives for a wide variety of thoughts on that holiday. I suggest: “The Lost Holiday;” “Thanksgiving Poems;” “A History of Thanksgiving;” “The Real Plymouth Colony;” and “A National Day of Mourning.”

Many different parts of the country claim the first real Thanksgiving, but the traditional belief is that it began as a New England celebration. At least that’s what we read in our history books every year at this time from grades one through eight.

Of course history can be written in many ways and slanted towards the ideas you want to imprint on young minds like: Be thankful for all your blessings because the Puritans of that first Thanksgiving had to endure some real hardships.

President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day  a national holiday in 1863.

Thanksgiving was originally celebrated on the final Thursday in November, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed it to the fourth Thursday in November to ensure it wouldn't fall too close to Christmas.

I say if FDR wanted Thanksgiving to really be celebrated as its own special holiday, he should have picked a day way earlier like the third Thursday in September or something. That way everyone wouldn’t be in such a mad rush to observe that other holiday known as “Black Friday” the following day.

Do you think the holiday Lincoln proclaimed is really celebrated the way he wanted it to be? In 1863 he proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving and Praise “to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.

Thanksgiving Lite

This year Nanci and I will celebrate “Thanksgiving Lite” because she is working at the grocery store that day. We’ll eat later in the evening. I plan to make a trip to Whole Foods (otherwise known as Whole Paycheck) to see what kind of dinner I can put together for the two of us.

This year, especially, I will be remembering Thanksgiving of 1963 when we lost our beloved New England president, John F. Kennedy. Who knows how different our national history would be if he had been able to complete his presidential term.

I will watch the Macy’s Day Parade in the morning. I love that parade. Then in the afternoon is the national yearly AKC dog show which Nanci and I always try to watch together. She may be able to catch some of it. Football is NOT in the schedule. This TV refuses to air any football games on Thanksgiving so that we can give the holiday it’s proper due. (Nah, I lie a lot. Don’t really like football unless the Pats are in the Super Bowl.)

Also not on the schedule is the celebration of Black Friday when the malls around here are loaded with cars and you take your life in your hands trying to get in and out of the stores. No thank you. I stay off the roads on New Year’s Eve and on Black Friday. The move to this apartment took whatever money we might have to spend on that day anyway. So it will be Christmas Lite too.

I do wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving. Nanci and I are thankful for our many blessings and hope that you are too; and try not to spend too much money on Friday, O.K.?

Thanks for listening.