The tradition of a sumptuous meal, complete with a wide array of seasonal dishes; a crazy parade a continent away, featuring ungainly inflatable cartoon characters; an annual game of touch football, shooting hoops in H-O-R-S-E, or just rooting for a favorite team on the television; the ritual shining the silver and sharpening of the knives, cleaning and preparing the house for guests, and even the shopping for all the ingredients combine to make Thanksgiving a uniquely memorable holiday that takes over the heart in the most unexpected ways.
As each family builds upon long-held traditions, and creates new ones, the feeling of Thanksgiving warms and comforts, offering safety and rest, in the sharing of the abundance of life’s simplest pleasures.
When my Sicilian grandparents moved cross-country from living too long in too-cold Massachusetts and settled in bright and warm California, they began celebrating Thanksgiving outdoors. After placing the family table under the orange tree, my grandfather carved the biggest turkey my grandmother could fit in the oven. That first year, they happily picked and served avocados, fig, persimmons and lemons from their garden; every year after they planted more, and the earth gave back in reward for the work they put in. In their return to a Mediterranean landscape and climate, they had finally come home, and they gave thanks.
Some of our more special family celebrations have included guests brought to the table whose names we never knew until they were written on the place cards—some from faraway lands who had only heard about Thanksgiving—and departed as friends, having participated in the most distinctive, truly American holiday. One year, a long-lost cousin hesitantly returned to the family fold, displaying dirt ground into his fingers, and a fleeting, nearly toothless smile, remnants of his life on the streets no one in the family could have possibly imagined. There was a Thanksgiving weekend spent camping in the East Mojave desert with then-Sen. Alan Cranston and his staff, along with lobbyists of every persuasion, working to preserve this special part of California as a long-envisioned national park. Two other Thanksgiving holidays could not have been more different: mourning the passing of our family patriarch, celebrating the baptism of our newly adopted son.
In less personal terms in recent years, Thanksgiving across the country has become a mere placeholder between the far more commercialized, consumerized holidays of Halloween and Christmas. It’s become known as merely the day before Black Friday, the start of shopping season, the hassle of a big meal to prepare and day to get through before the real holidays begin. The leftovers are hardly cold before the shopping madness sets in. Driving back from Los Angeles on Thanksgiving night, our family has witnessed more than one midnight traffic jam near a suburban mall, cars in line on the off-ramps, with drivers impatiently waiting their turn to enter the center to do battle over acquiring the latest in manufactured goods. The next morning, we’ve often glimpsed jam-packed shopping center parking lots while we take a hike on a deserted trail in a park all to ourselves.
By the time shoppers kick it up to this level, all thoughts of this year’s Thanksgiving celebration—less than twelve hours old—have faded into long ago.
But there’s another way to keep the thanks in Thanksgiving just a little while longer. Celebrate the day after Thanksgiving as “Buy Nothing Day.” It’s the annual observation, thought up by a retired Canadian adman, that encourages would-be shoppers to go cold turkey the day after turkey day—and suggests they become more conscious consumers every other day of the year. It’s one holiday that encourages staying home and maybe even indulging oneself without spending cash. Instead, donate a coat, catch up on your reading, hold a hand, pay a visit, make a pie, write in a journal, clean out a closet, or plant a tree. Just keep your purse closed and your wallet in your pocket.
The reality of the economy this year might make Buy Nothing Day somewhat devastating to those who depend on holiday sales to survive. So here’s a modest proposal for post- Thanksgiving shopping and gift-giving: become a conscious consumer; shop and buy locally, avoid unnecessary accumulation, and spend time, not money as much as possible. It might just keep the spirit of Thanksgiving around a little while longer. And for that we can give thanks.
For more information about Buy Nothing Day, check out HYPERLINK "http://www.adbusters.org" www.adbusters.org.