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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

The war on Thanksgiving

'Tis the month of Thanksgiving and all through the land
The retailers burst with a Christmassy brand;
Instead of the hues of a New England autumn,
These stores are all sporting a scene much less awesome.

    If you have walked into your neighborhood drugstore or minimart or CVS Superstore recently, you may have been struck by something bitterly unpleasant, like the taste of orange juice when you have just brushed your teeth. With Thanksgiving upon us, we would expect to see stores and retailers decorating their establishments with fall colors and harvest gear, anticipating the goodwill that will be unleashed after several oversized helpings of turkey, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.
    And yet, things seem to have taken a rather disturbing turn, as Christmas — still more than a month away — has already invaded our lives.
    We have watched in silence for years as the official beginning of the Christmas season has crept ever earlier, nudging quietly closer to Halloween.  This November, even before the first Boston snowfall, a sleigh-shaped pall has fallen over the country.
    There's a war on Thanksgiving, and Kris Kringle is leading the charge.
    For years, Christmas and Thanksgiving have had an uneasy truce, brokered by Hanukkah, which appears to do its own thing.  While the winter holiday loomed large in December, November was always Thanksgiving's month — a time when stores were filled with pilgrims and turkeys and shockingly racist Native American paraphernalia. It was a more innocent era.
    Yet recently, we in America have watched as buckled shoes and cornucopias have been torn asunder by elves and reindeer and Santa hats — a cold and sinister reminder that the Man in Red is on his way, wielding toys to be stuffed mercilessly into our stockings and demanding sustenance for his midnight ride.
    Ladies and gentleman, we must defend Thanksgiving. Sure, a birthday party for Jesus is fun, but we've done that over two thousand times already, and he stopped showing up a while ago. Meanwhile, this is only the 388th Thanksgiving, and it's still going strong. November should be a time to celebrate abundance in excess, to prepare more food than you can possibly eat, to gather the family that you concurrently love and despise and to stuff your turkey with other delicious and preferably endangered animals.  That is the beauty of America.

It's the middle of November and we're all giving thanks
For our families, our friends, non-failures of banks.
There are mountains of food to be made at great cost;
'Tis the Thanksgiving season — Saint Nick can get lost.