How to Save Thanksgiving from the Curse of Consumerism
Why Halloween and Christmas might be beyond salvation and New Year’s is the “purest” holiday.
How great is Halloween? We dress up as funny characters, get drunk together and eat candy. We really let loose. There’s something about putting on a costume that sheds us of our inhibitions. It feels like a license to misbehave. We aren’t ourselves for a night. It’s glorious, glorious escapism.
Why do we crave this release? Why do we need this escape from our “real” lives to flirt with sexy nurses and sexy SWAT agents and sexy cowgirls? The same reason we go out and drink on any Friday: because the magnitude of our existence is heavy and we simultaneously know how great we can be as people and how far from that greatness we actually are. Plus it’s just fun.
The whole Holiday season is fun, from Halloween through New Year’s. We see friends and family, actually put pie in our pie holes and OMG… pumpkin-spice lattes, amirite? Yet, amidst this smorgasbord of joy, an urchin of frustration looms. Yes, I’m talking about the glut of holiday movies that Hollywood shovels onto us.
Enough scary movies come out around Halloween to raise the stock value of Ambien. This year featured It, Jigsaw, Boo 2: A Madea Halloween, Happy Death Day and The Snowman. That’s not to mention all the scary content that creeps into our streaming feeds during the season of spook. I admit, I’m not a huge fan of scary movies. I appreciate them as an art form, but if I’m going to spend two hours triggering my flight response I would rather go to an ICP show. That would at least be retrospectively funny.
The same thing happens around Christmas. Like our intestines filling with sugary treats, our streaming feeds fill with holiday movies. The ads on TV, the graphics overlaying our talk shows, even the cheerleader outfits during football games pulse with Yuletide joy. But at least there are fewer new Christmas movies every year than there are new scary movies. All the best Christmas movies are old. Christmas is about nostalgia. Halloween is about novelty. But they’re both, as much as anything, about selling crap.
While some Christmas movies are cockle-warming delights and some scary movies are really fucking scary, the best part about either of these holidays is the time spent with friends and family. It’s not about the pumpkins; it’s about the homemade pumpkin beer bongs. It’s not about the costumes; it’s about walking up to someone you wouldn’t otherwise walk up to and unsarcastically saying, “What are you supposed to be?” It’s not about the presents, but rather (bout to get mindful as fuck right here) being present.
And yet both of these holidays exist primarily as economic steroid injections. Buy your candy, your costume, your movie ticket and your pumpkin spice latte! Buy your tree, your lights, your presents and your picture with Santa! I’m not saying we can’t enjoy these holidays because of their commercial persuasions. I’m saying we are forced to enjoy them despite their commercial persuasions. And some of us — those of us most deeply embedded in the consumerist matrix — enjoy them because of their commercial persuasions.
Will we sit idly by while all the best things in life get coopted by the dollar? If it comes with free two-day shipping, then probably.
Almighty Capitalism can have Halloween and Christmas. I’ll still manage to put the ever-looming economic reaper out of mind and flirt with some sexy nurses, sexy SWAT agents and sexy cowgirls. I’ll focus on the smile on my cousin’s face when he opens up his Best Buy gift card, rather than the high chance he doesn’t use it and Best Buy gets $25 dollars for free. I’ll chalk-up Halloween and Christmas to big business. That’s fine.
But only under one condition!
That’s right. This is called compromise America. Google it.
Capitalism can keep Halloween and Christmas but we have to move Black Friday away from Thanksgiving. Move it to the Friday after Halloween. That sounds more appropriate anyway right? “Black Friday” has a spooky ring to it. Why is it called “Black Friday” anyway? Never mind. The point is: we must take action to save our purest holiday from the relentless force of the consumer industrial complex.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Black Friday isn’t he only symptom of consumerism infecting Thanksgiving. What about the Macy’s day parade? It’s named after a department store for Christ’s sake! Also, if you’re into ‘pure’ holidays, wouldn’t New Year’s — a celebration of being alive a year after we last celebrated being alive — be the purest?”
You make some decent points. Yes, New Years is more “pure.” But Thanksgiving wins on both food and football. Yes, those are also fueled by commercial interests, but let’s be reasonable. Food and football inform the essence of Thanksgiving. They are the butter to the bread of being with loved ones. Don’t mess with them.
Finally, the Macy’s Day Parade… that can go — at least the name. Let’s call it “The March of the Balloons” or “The Snood Waddle.” But since we’re on a roll here, why not cancel the parade entirely, play an NFL game in London, give the rights to NBC and call it good?
Just to recap 1) Move Black Friday 2) Replace the Macy’s Day parade with a London NFL game.
Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays when we come together under no pretense of gift giving or even costume wearing (as fun as costume wearing is). We certainly aren’t bombarded by Thanksgiving-themed movies. We show up, eat, drink and take stock of one another’s lives. It’s about being together. What’s that I hear? Is that Come Together playing in the distance?
You know what Thanksgiving is not about? It’s not about buying seventy-inch flat screen TVs. It’s about watching football on them and trying to stay awake with tryptophan coursing through our veins. It’s about sitting around a table with friends and family and breaking bread. It’s the last best American holiday and it needs our help.
