Thanksgiving/BlackFriday Thoughts

November 27 was the typical American holiday of over-indulgence and "good feelings" for loved ones. Thanksgiving is known to everyone as the day that Americans gather around to eat together and to give thanks for whatever they are thankful for. Initial thoughts going into this holiday were to clear room for the food I planned to eat. Just because it is an ultimately empty holiday doesn't mean that I don't have to refuse copious amounts of free food. In class the week leading up to the holiday break, Andy made it very clear that the holiday was based around early American genocide, where the white European settlers came in and essentially destroyed the indigenous Native American population. Since those early years, America has emulated the holiday in joyous celebration, gradually forgetting the circumstances surrounding the origins of the holiday.
The day before thanksgiving I spent time with my girlfriend Desiree and I first told her Happy Genocide day as we sat down to make our gingerbread house for the big meal. She responded with literally "Chyeeahh," acknowledging the thought as a joke in initially, but then expanding by saying how sad it was that people chose not to remember the killing of Native Americans. "there really isn't any point to this holiday. People take it more as a way to eat a lot and not care, and then to shop a lot the day after. Consumerism rocks!"(This was fairly clearly sarcastic, and it is hard to represent sarcasm in typeface)On Thanksgiving, I wished my parents a happy Genocide day as well, to which my father, looking up from his book, responded "Yep" and my mother gave me a silencing look. It would seem that the atmosphere didn't allow for questioning of the holiday's motives.

On Black Friday I stayed home. This was not, however, out of some anti-corporate and anti-consumerist motive. It was because there is actually nothing out there on the market that I really want right now. Thus, no driving force directing me to whatever bargains may have plagued the minds of the other reckless consumers. I stayed home and sat on y couch and read a book. Though I am aware that had there been something I wanted, I would've likely gone to go and get it. Saturday I went shopping to grab some necessities (admittedly along with some not-so-necessary items) such as new pants and sweater. The crowds had thinned greatly, and I realized that these sales, whatever they had been, would almost certainly drop to lower on January 2nd, after Christmas and new years, where whatever is left over needs to be gotten rid of. People had flocked to sales simply because the TV told them to.

Additionally worth mentioning was the Monday we returned to school and reunited after the small break and I asked people what they had given thanks for. Not surprisingly, I found that everyone I asked said they hadn't actually given thanks and had just begun to tuck into their meal. Perhaps (and this is most certainly an optomistic view) this indicates a decline in the Holiday's importance, and ultimately thanksgiving as we know it will cease to exist in anything more than name.