What Happened to Thanksgiving?

What happened to Thanksgiving? Some holidays are world wide, Christmas, New Years, and some that are American only, The Fourth of July, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Now there is Canadian Thanksgiving, how'd that happen? Pilgrims from the Mayflower moved north and held another dinner? Who cares, give the Canadians Thanksgiving we don't want it anymore. If we do we sure don't show it.
What makes a holiday special? Songs, carols, Peanuts Special shown every year. What song is for Thanksgiving? To Grandma's House We Go, that can easily be put in with Christmas. So no songs or Carols, how about Peanuts? A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, so there is a Peanuts special, but it's the worst one. Even Halloween has a better Peanuts special.
But wait you say, Thanksgiving has football and the Macy's parade. You are correct but let's look a little closer. In the past few years the NFL has been putting games on Thursdays during the season making the Thanksgiving Day games routine. Macy's Parade ends with Santa so really it's a Christmas parade. think about it, the movie that starts with the Macy's parade is a Christmas movie. AH HA, you shout, what about Alice's Restaurant? I have to give you that one, Arlo Guthrie's epic song and movie contains the Thanksgiving Massacree and some people, and TV stations, seem to play the movie every Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving has been reduced to part of an Arlo Guthrie song and the first two hours of the Macy's parade ( coincidentally that's the length of the song also).
I'm sure there are still a few of you who disagree but think about this, what do people talk more about, Thanksgiving or.............black Friday. I think most people would rather have the Friday after Thanksgiving off from work than Thanksgiving itself. Black Friday has become such an obsession in this country that it has moved to Wednesday. Watch the ads on TV, Black Friday sale prices starting Wednesday. How can you go shopping on the day before Thanksgiving when you should be baking all those pies. Think of what would be the present day Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving, the family around the table or people fighting to get in the doors of Best Buy at midnight. Thanksgiving has become nothing more than a little speed bump in the way of Christmas shopping.
How did I become so cynical about Thanksgiving? I blame it on the Post Office. A day set aside by the government to be with family and to give thanks for the things in your life is just another day to the USPS. In my 25 years with the PO I have been forced into work on most Thanksgivings. The powers that be, think people really care that they get their mail on Friday. They think that people can tell the difference between the mail that they would have gotten on Thursday from the Friday mail had there not been a holiday.
It's too easy to blame just the Post Office. Americans themselves are to blame. Ironically, we as a society that over indulges in everything we do, has pushed aside the very day set aside to overindulge. So let's sit back a second this Thanksgiving, really think about what matters the most to us( family and friends), and enjoy the day. After all you still have thirty shopping days till Christmas (and that's a whole nother blog)

Oh you can get everything you want at Alice's restaurant
You can get everything you want at Alice's restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
Oh you can get everything you want at Alice's restaurant