Christmas is gobbling up Thanksgiving, the uniquely American holiday
OK. The pumpkin season is officially over, and now it’s Christmastime.
Walk into any store in America right now, and you’ll think you’ve stepped into Santa’s workshop with peppermint everything, aisles of ornaments, pre-lit trees, inflatable snowmen and twinkling lights in your neighborhood that would make even Clark Griswold proud.
But try finding a simple Thanksgiving decoration. A turkey, a harvest wreath, even a grateful-themed tablecloth, and you practically need a search warrant. Somewhere between the discount Halloween candy and the Black Friday promo aisle, Thanksgiving has vanished like a missing person.
And it’s not your imagination. Christmas is steamrolling Thanksgiving and there are three big cultural and economic reasons why.
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Let’s call this what it is: Thanksgiving just isn’t profitable enough.
Thanksgiving has stayed loyal to its old-school identity of food, family, gratitude, naps and football. It’s emotional but not commercial. You don’t buy matching pajamas for it. You don’t send greeting cards. Your kids don’t demand a gift haul.
Retailers hate that.
On the other hand, Christmas is a revenue machine:
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Thanksgiving décor might bring in a couple billion dollars. Christmas? Try hundreds of billions of dollars.
Stores don’t even pretend anymore. The moment the last trick-or-treater grabs their fun-size Snickers, out come the reindeer and wreaths. Not because Americans wanted it but because stores can squeeze an extra six weeks of revenue out of your holiday spirit.
If you’ve wondered why you can buy a 12-foot inflatable nutcracker before you can find a turkey placemat, now you know.
If you want to measure the cultural shift in this country, don’t look at décor and just examine behavior.
Twenty years ago, Thanksgiving was sacred. Now? It’s basically the pregame show for Black Friday with some stores actually opening on Thanksgiving.
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Retailers have done a masterful job convincing Americans that holiday shopping is a holiday. Black Friday used to begin Friday morning. Then midnight. Then Thursday evening. Then Thursday afternoon.
At this point, the turkey isn’t even cold before people are scanning QR codes, checking store apps and comparing “doorbusters” that happen at 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.
Thanksgiving slowly stopped being a national moment of pause and started becoming a national moment of spending. Gratitude is getting replaced with discount fear of missing out. And when the holiday’s main purpose is eclipsed by sales, the culture follows. The decorations don’t stand a chance.
Thanksgiving is about reflection. Christmas is about escapism.
One demands we sit with what we have while the other invites us to cover life in lights, nostalgia, sugar cookies and some good old-fashioned instant gratification.
In a year where inflation is squeezing families, housing costs are outrageous and more than half of Americans say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, people are grabbing onto anything that brings comfort even if it means dragging out the Christmas bins before the pumpkins rot.
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Christmas is warm, nostalgic and sparkly. Thanksgiving is quiet, reflective and slow, which are three things modern America has forgotten how to tolerate.
Some people will shrug and say, “Who cares? It’s just decorations.”
But I think it’s deeper. Thanksgiving isn’t political. It’s purely American.
Thanksgiving is the one holiday uniquely designed to make us pause, reconnect and recalibrate. There are no gifts. No costumes. No commercial agenda. It’s a 24-hour reminder that what we already have is enough, which is something we desperately need in a world that constantly tells us we’re behind.
If we allow Thanksgiving to disappear and be replaced by 60 days of Christmas promos and artificial urgency, we will lose a holiday that strengthens the financial and emotional health of families.
A country that forgets how to be grateful eventually forgets how to be grounded.
Look, I love Christmastime. I’m not the Grinch. But we can enjoy Christmas without erasing Thanksgiving.
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So, this year, don’t let retailers rush you past the one holiday where nobody is asking you to spend money, buy things you don’t need, or “spave” your way into more holiday debt.
Sit. Eat. Talk. Watch football. Take a nap. Be grateful.
And proudly display a turkey or two.
It’s time to bring Thanksgiving back.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY TED JENKIN
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