Whatever Happened to the Thanksgiving Season?

When I was a boy, there were two clear and demarcated holiday seasons: Thanksgiving and Christmas. After Halloween, it was the season to prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday. The Christmas season did not begin until the day after Thanksgiving. No one decorated for Christmas until after Turkey Day, and even though some stores had Christmas decorations on display prior, the real celebration did not begin until the end of November.

Those days appear to be long gone. After Halloween (which is now celebrated with an emphasis I never witnessed as a boy) we immediately enter the Christmas season in high gear. Stores have their decorations displayed by the end of October, some even before; and people are decorating their houses beginning in November. And while we still have a recognized Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., it now appears as nothing more than a blip on the radar screen of the holiday season, and every year some inquire as to what has happened.

But we all know what has happened-- the celebration of Christmas, like everything else in American culture, has become a commodity. Madison Avenue could never figure out how to make serious money off of Thanksgiving, so the task then was to lengthen the Christmas season. Given the consumer mentality of the Christmas season and the enticing lure of lights, decorations, and Christmas music, it was not too difficult to put Americans in Christmas mode earlier and earlier. If this keeps up we will literally be having Christmas in July.

I am simply making observations here. I am not proposing some kind of remedy to the loss of the Thanksgiving season because the celebration of Christmas has become a rather strange anomaly for me as my thinking has changed over the years. Yes, I do celebrate Christmas with family and friends, but I have truly come to believe that it is quite odd to celebrate God's self-emptying in Jesus Christ with unbridled greed and materialism, while we push and shove people in the stores the day after Thanksgiving to get the latest technological gadgets that the stores purposely stock in limited numbers. And for those of you who are planning to start the shopping spree early in the morning on November 26 this year, just know that the retail establishment is greedily taking advantage of your greed.

It would be preferable to deck the halls only after Thanksgiving, but since it seems we will not be returning to a more rational and disciplined situation any time soon, at least some of us can beat the drum of reminder of how far the actual celebration of the birth of Christ has strayed from what it truly means for "Immanuel"-- "God With Us,"-- to have taken the form of flesh on our behalf.

Christmas is not your birthday. It is not mine. But judging from the way we observe the holiday each year, one would think otherwise.