Last year I shared what our family traditions are for Thanksgiving in my Thanksgiving Day post. This year will be our first year staying in Florida for Thanksgiving and though I’m not sure exactly where we’ll spend the holiday or who with, I’m sure we’ll be with some family.
Last year I started gathering decorations for each holiday to rotate throughout the year. So last week after we got back from New York, we took down our Halloween decorations and I got out the box of Thanksgiving stuff. My thanksgiving collection is quite abysmal so I got excited to go out looking for a few more cute little items to decorate our house with.
I knew which places NOT to visit that were done with Halloween AND Thanksgiving/Fall before Halloween. But what I didn’t expect was for every store to already be filled up with Christmas and done with Thanksgiving.
Christmas lights went up in our neighborhood before Halloween and were turned on November 1 (the same as last year). And I started seeing Christmas items in some stores way back in July so I’m definitely not surprised to see Christmas starting to flood stores but I definitely didn’t expect for there to be a complete lack of anything Thanksgiving or Fall available.
I’m not just disappointed to not be able to deck my house out in Thankful splendor, but mostly because I see a scary cultural shift happening. You have Halloween that is all about candy and then you have Christmas which is all about presents. Sure, Thanksgiving is still stuck in the middle but it’s just about eating too much and Black Friday shopping, right?
When we were in Ireland I had a local person ask if I was excited for Thanksgiving and when I said not really since my family wasn’t around she responded “Oh. I though Thanksgiving was the American Christmas.” She was under the impression that because we get more time off and it is a major family holiday that we see it as more important. And while that may not be true (Christmas is certainly bigger in our family), I’m starting to wonder if maybe it should be.
I love the feeling of Christmas, the joy, the snow (even if just imagined while residing in South Florida), the family, the love. Sure, the presents are nice and add a little “something” to the day and I definitely don’t think the season would be the same without the build up to Christmas morning but I do think we could do with much less and focus more on the family aspects.
And that is exactly what Thanksgiving is! Being with family, celebrating the season, loving each other and being thankful for all we have in our lives. So why is it being overshadowed? I’m certainly not ready to deck the halls for Christmas, I just wish I had more fall spirit around (especially since my natural environment is anything but fall-like!)
