It’s Nov. 10, meaning 45 holiday shopping days left. Ready? Set? Go.
Hold on. What happened to the fourth Thursday in November? The day of football, food and family. My favorite day of the year: Thanksgiving.
Some New England towns might have had to reschedule Halloween’s trick-or-treating due to snow, but it isn’t 1939 and Franklin D. Roosevelt isn’t in the Oval Office, so unless I missed it on Twitter, Thanksgiving is still set for Nov. 24.
Turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, carrots, green bean casserole, rolls with butter, pumpkin pie, my mom’s chocolate cake. Family from near and far. How could I not be counting down the next 14 days by the hour?
It’s worthy of every college students’ countdown list, well ahead of winter break, because when we come back to Huntington Avenue, there are only eight days of class, six days of finals, two weekends and a reading day between us and three weeks of doing nothing back at home.
The world outside academia doesn’t have the same glory and pedestal for the biggest feast of the year. I wish it would, but instead it marks the beginning of the sprint to Christmas and New Year’s Eve, glossing over a glorious day, speeding into 2012 and beyond.
This year, many retailers are revamping Black Friday to Black Midnight and opening at midnight as the dishwasher finishes load number two from the day’s feast.
The late night rush is almost disgraceful to those that love Thanksgiving as much as I do. The retailers expect you to be up and ready to fight for low priced TVs and the latest Sesame Street talking dolls by midnight, after having slaved over the stove that morning.
As if Black Friday isn’t early enough (Nov. 25), while running errands on the Friday before Halloween, I noticed the Starbucks on Newbury Street and Boylston Street had switched to their red holiday cups early when they ran out of the standard white.
Starbucks usually releases them on Nov. 1, which in my book is still early as they depict a classic December scene with snowmen and reindeer – no turkeys, fallen leaves or pumpkin pies in sight.
What happened to watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, after attending the one in town, watching football and falling asleep on the couch while the cats and dogs try to get into the leftovers?
It’s a day of fullness, in food but also in company. My family eats dinner at 7 p.m. as one set of aunts and uncles is on meal number two of the day. We don’t stop eating until leftovers are finished on Saturday at a get together with family friends from my childhood.
It’s always been my favorite holiday since I was little, so I picked the January-June co-op cycle to make sure I’d have the chance to go home every year. My dad used to drop me off at my grandparents and I’d help cook, even if I was just sitting in the “cooking chair,” an old high chair that had been modified so I could be at counter level.
I grew up with a December that was one giant holiday: birthdays, Hanukkah and multiple Christmases depending what city we were in for which weekend. It was always a blur and overly busy, but Thanksgiving stayed the same. And when it did change, it did for the better. It moved to my house, into a bigger kitchen where we could add more family to the table.
For a moment, let’s forget what’s on the menu or who landed at Plymouth Rock and what happened afterwards and focus on the now. Here we are, in one house, eating together, which as college students, we should grab on to and not let go of.
Do me a favor and throw out the countdowns to winter break and the December holidays and focus on what’s first: Thanksgiving.
– Sarah Moomaw can be reached at [email protected].
