It was 150 years ago that President Lincoln declared a national holiday to be a day for ""Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens", to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26. **
Subsequent Presidents fiddled with the actual date for the national holiday and set it as the final Thursday in November.
In 1939, November had five Thursdays so President Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas and changed it to the fourth Thursday of the month. The country was still reeling from the effects of the depression and he wanted to stimulate the economy.
Perhaps his decision was the beginning of losing the real meaning of Thanksgiving.
As a child, Thanksgiving was all about having a huge meal to be shared with your family. My mother would cook and bake for days getting ready for the meal. Our Thanksgiving table couldn't even accommodate all the food she'd prepare. And, we all did our best to eat everything she sat before us.
There were no stores open on Thanksgiving offering super bargains or crazily extending shopping hours. And, at our house, the meal wasn't scheduled around any football games that might be televised. You visited with your relatives, yes, face to face, not via text messages then you ate the food prepared. Afterwards, you visited again while the kids were outside playing.
In the last few years Thanksgiving has moved away from family meals and traditions and become a stepping stone for greed and envy as shoppers compete to find and buy merchandise. Retailers have chosen to cash in and promote this by hosting Black Friday sales. Merchandise is chosen and sold for a limited amount of time which forces shoppers to be in their stores at a specific time to take advantage of their pricing.
I, for one, would like to see a return to the "old way" of celebrating the holiday where we'd all take time to be thankful for what we HAVE and not what we can push our way through a mob at 2:00 a.m. to buy.
** Wikipedia
Subsequent Presidents fiddled with the actual date for the national holiday and set it as the final Thursday in November.
In 1939, November had five Thursdays so President Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas and changed it to the fourth Thursday of the month. The country was still reeling from the effects of the depression and he wanted to stimulate the economy.
Perhaps his decision was the beginning of losing the real meaning of Thanksgiving.
As a child, Thanksgiving was all about having a huge meal to be shared with your family. My mother would cook and bake for days getting ready for the meal. Our Thanksgiving table couldn't even accommodate all the food she'd prepare. And, we all did our best to eat everything she sat before us.
There were no stores open on Thanksgiving offering super bargains or crazily extending shopping hours. And, at our house, the meal wasn't scheduled around any football games that might be televised. You visited with your relatives, yes, face to face, not via text messages then you ate the food prepared. Afterwards, you visited again while the kids were outside playing.
In the last few years Thanksgiving has moved away from family meals and traditions and become a stepping stone for greed and envy as shoppers compete to find and buy merchandise. Retailers have chosen to cash in and promote this by hosting Black Friday sales. Merchandise is chosen and sold for a limited amount of time which forces shoppers to be in their stores at a specific time to take advantage of their pricing.
I, for one, would like to see a return to the "old way" of celebrating the holiday where we'd all take time to be thankful for what we HAVE and not what we can push our way through a mob at 2:00 a.m. to buy.
** Wikipedia
