My Thanksgiving Beef

I know that Thanksgiving is supposed to involve turkey, but neither Andrew or I really like turkey, so we aren't going to have one. Andrew and I aren't planning on cooking Thanksgiving dinner at all. We're planning on going from house to house until we're full. We are refusing to solidify any plans.

I would, however, like something festive in my house. We went to Target the other day to get Andrew some medicine because he was sick. We were using our last gift card from our wedding. Because the medicine was only $5, I thought that we could maybe look for something Thanksgiving-like to have up in our house. We looked and looked and looked but there wasn't even a hint of anything autumn-ish in the whole store. It was decked out, from floor to ceiling, in Christmas decorations, something we don't need any more of.

We got married last December and have 4 boxes of Christmas stuff to decorate our tiny apartment with. Yes, 4 boxes of decorations and a Christmas tree. It's nice becuase Christmas is really festive at our house, but we are really lacking when it comes to the other holidays.

So, I went home kind of sad that they had nothing in their store for Thanksgiving, which is still 2 weeks away!

I was telling Andrew's mom about this and she said, "Try Macey's. They probably won't be ready for Christmas for a little while."

So, yesterday Andrew and I went grocery shopping, and...Macey's was totally decked out for Christmas. They had Christmas trees up everywhere. All of their Halloween candy had been replaced by Christmas candy. They had a grand piano out and had hired someone to sit and play Christmas carols. They even had a scary lady dressed up as Mrs. Claus, handing out candy canes (Andrew tried to get one from her but she chewed him out).

There was nothing Thanksgiving-themed in the whole store. Again, I was a little upset by this.

My mom thinks it is because they don't make much money off of Thanksgiving. And really, this could be true. I mean, for Halloween, you have to buy candy and costumes. Both of which are kind of expensive. For Christmas you have to buy candy and presents. For Easter you have to buy candy. Candy is just--expensive.

It's because they have to manufacture it...it doesn't grow here, so it isn't cheap. Anything that grows here is cheap. That's the whole point of Thanksgiving, isn't it? To celebrate the bounty that we have here. And what can we grow easily here? Pumpkins and potatoes and corn and, apparently turkeys, too. So, because they are plentiful here, they are cheap.

Andrew says that in Italy, pumpkin is so expensive. They splurged as missionaries once and got a pumpkin to make a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. He said it was over 20 euro! That's so expensive. Our pumpkin was not even a dollar!

We do have the flipside here, though. We saw some pomegrante juice at the store. It was almost 7 dollars for 64 fluid ounces! If we were in Turkey...ummm...it would be so cheap there! Just because they grow it...

So, back to my beef about Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving, and not that I don't like Christmas, but I think that Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. You get together with family and eat and play games and you remember what you're thankful for.

But, it seems to be being pushed out of the way by Christmas, which seems to be all about "What do you want?" instead of "What are you thankful for?" I think that we should put more emphasis on Thanksgiving--our world would probably be a better place for it.

But that's about all the time I have to write for now. I have to go Christmas shopping.