Thanksgiving is a joke. Is our culture so lacking in sincerity that we cannot be true to our word even for one day? This is our so-called “day of thanks,” and yet it is immediately followed by the most fanatic few hours of mall-ravaging the whole world has yet to rival: Black Friday. Are we really so disingenuous as to forget the underlying morals of our traditions? Or have these traditions somehow become trademarked through the corporate world’s exploitation of our materialistic impulsiveness? Maybe it is not such a neat dichotomy because it certainly seems to be a combination of both.
I am not claiming to know exactly who is at fault for what I feel to be Thanksgiving’s insincerity, but what I do know is that I find it repulsive when the majority of Americans gather together every November to gorge in a gesture of “sincere thanks” only to sleep it off and then “shop ’til we drop.”
I feel that as a whole, Thanksgiving has become a mockery unto ourselves as a people and a spit in the face to those who are less fortunate. We must show a little repose this season. We must not get lost in this year’s consumerism circus, and we must truly think about what it means to be thankful in life and what it is best to be thankful for.
I am proud to be an American. I do not doubt for a second that America has accomplished great things. Our country lays claim to the most noble of liberties, but gluttony and artificiality are among none of them. So if we wish to establish the cultural dignity that we so confidently presume to possess, then I think it is high time that we give our shopping carts a rest and invest our efforts in what really matters: our families, our friends and our people.